


And This Night is Getting On

by sugarboat



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Background Jealousy, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Blood Transfusions, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Hurt/Comfort, Implied imbibement of bodily fluids, Injury Recovery, M/M, Male Solo, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Power Dynamics, Referenced Blood Drinking, Rituals, Slow burn Horror, Verbal Humiliation, Voyeurism, basically 60:40 soap opera:horror, blood letting, even more poorly disguised masochism, poorly disguised sadism, secret pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 07:55:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 41,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19205140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Jon just wants to put one mystery to rest, and experience the prospectors' catacombs for himself. It doesn't go quite as planned. Peter decides to make this his business. And then continues to make it his business.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairbanks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbanks/gifts).



> Happy extremely belated birthday! <3
> 
> A request for Peter/Jon for you, from Amber <3 A request that very clearly spiraled well out of control.

If Jon had been asked before what he thought the lower levels of the miles and miles of twisting, labyrinthine catacombs below the city of Yharnam would be like, one of the speculative qualities would certainly have been quiet. It was a bit- well, actually, it was entirely horrifying how quickly this assumption was proven incorrect. 

Almost the moment after stepping off on an ancient, creaking lift Jon heard _things_. Creatures, or people, shuffling around in the dark. Distant howling that rattled his bones in their meat, that started low and deep and crested, achingly, upwards in volume and in pitch, a caterwauling cry that was slow to trail off while Daisy rolled her eyes and gripped him by the arm. The strength in her fingers, digging bruises into his forearm as she yanked him forward, was surprisingly comforting.

“Come on, Sims,” she demanded, shoving her torch into his free hand. “You’ve invited yourself along, so you may as well make yourself useful.” 

“R-Right.” He gave a short, jerking nod. Tried to curl his numbly tingling fingers properly around the torch as the better bulk of his concentration was dedicated to wondering, “That- That was, uh-”

Daisy turned back towards him. Her eyes were strange in the flickering light of the fire, catching and refracting the glow of it in a way that didn’t ring entirely human. The shadows on her face, too, they shifted and warped, her skin eerily luminescent. 

“What?” His gaze flicked down to her mouth as she spoke – not to her lips, but to her teeth, the points of them.

“What was that?” The sound was like no beast Jon had ever heard. And they were deep enough down that he couldn’t write it off as a coincidence, as some creature lurking near a forgotten entrance, its cries echoing hollowly back to them. 

She smiled at him, mean and harsh. “Nervous? You’ll be finding out soon.” 

A prospect that was not at all reassuring in the slightest. Something of it must have shown on his face, as Daisy gave a low, curling laugh that seemed to seep inside him. She pulled the weapon from her back – a nasty, serrated thing, designed to catch and scrape and tear – and freed its length with a harsh jerk of her wrist. 

“Relax, Archivist,” she told him. “I’m plenty enough to keep the both of us alive. Provided you don’t do anything stupid.” 

“I’m not an idiot,” Jon snapped back. “I have been on a Hunt before.” 

“…Right.” Her tone more than exhibited how much she thought his experience counted for. “Even if you have been, this is no Hunt.” 

“I know that. I’m hardly defenseless.” 

She studied him for a moment, her body gone unnaturally still. Her gaze unwavering in a way that Jon found uniquely disconcerting. He held himself stiff in response, a bid not to fidget and twitch himself away. Before he could register it she had slipped into motion again, whiplash fast, her left hand fisted in the collar of his clothes, hauling him nearly off the ground as she shoved him back into the wall. He flung the torch out in an effort to avoid engulfing them both in flames. 

“Good _lord_ , Daisy-”

“Thought you weren’t defenseless,” she sneered into his face, voice quiet. She twisted her hand in a manner that somehow resulted his collar constricting, snared around his neck. “There are things down here that are faster – and stronger – than me.” 

“Then how,” he wheezed out, “Are you going to kill them?” 

Her hand tightened further, the strangled little drags of air he’d been getting lessened, and lessened – the panicked heave of his chest, sucking in shorter inspirations, forcing it back out just as quickly, as sharply – until he grabbed at her wrist through the white sparks swimming at the edges of his vision and she abruptly dropped him to sag, gasping, against the wall.

“You leave that to me,” she told him. Then nudged him with the tip of her boot. “Just stay out of my way, and do your best not to get yourself killed.” 

“I hadn’t realized you cared,” Jon managed, a hissing rasp more than anything. He rubbed at the sore skin of his throat, freezing in place when Daisy tapped the edge of her weapon delicately against the underside of his chin. 

“Don’t get the wrong idea, Sims. If it were up to me, I’d leave you here to fend for yourself. Find your own way back to the surface.” Dramatic timing, Jon thought ruefully, as one of those long, piercing howls echoed out from the bowels of the tomb again. “But seeing as Bouchard has made keeping you alive _my_ problem…”

“Right.” She didn’t need to finish. And a distinct, unpleasant tension welled up tight in his chest at the mention of Elias. 

“Glad we understand each other.” The curved tooth of her spear dug once more into his chin – that soft, vulnerable hollow behind the hook of his jaw – before she drew it back. 

A dull little trickle of blood dribbled down his neck. He caught it with gloved fingers before it could stain his collar, felt the irritation twisting up his features as he wiped at it. It would have been hard to miss Daisy’s eyes tracking him. Or not him. His _blood_. Her lips twitched, and Jon cleared his throat pointedly, doing his best not to startle when her gaze snapped back up to his own. 

“Let’s go,” she practically snarled, turning on her heel and heading down the darkened hall. Jon only watched her go for a few seconds, only briefly considered the possibility of letting her stalk off on her own and returning himself to the relative safety of the Archives. “Keep up or don’t.” 

He could still leave. The statements he’d read – and taken – regarding the catacombs varied wildly in their contents, their descriptions of these abandoned and buried places. Between long-winding, claustrophobic corridors that splintered and fed into one another in ceaseless loops and reports of massive chasms, great halls that flickered with the light of torches long since burned to their sputtering end. Tales of massive buildings worked right out of the dirt and stone of the ground itself, underwater lakes peppered with mossy clumps of land. 

Jon wondered rather skeptically which he would be seeing today. And yet, there was a reason he’d held himself back from further exploration than first few levels accessible through the ancient entrance and shuttered gate tucked away in the bowels of the Institute. The only commonality between the multitudinous accounts was that of the danger held within them. 

Beasts prowling through the ruinous remains of dilapidated civilizations, and other creatures, worse and more alien, warped and changed by their growth in the lightless depths they were caught within, mindlessly ravenous. Unsettling and bone-quaking as they were, the mournful howls Jon had heard already were hardly the first he’d encountered, even without going so far down as he and Daisy had thus descended. At least before now, he’d been able to convince himself he was hearing beasts from the city. That they were even beasts at all. 

And no one else knew he was here. He’d been careful to hide his plans from Martin, who would have politely and incessantly badgered him into stopping. Tim and Sasha, too, though that was mostly so he wouldn’t have to hear how terrible they found his decision-making processes to be. And Elias…

Well, if Jon was going to delve into the technicalities of the situation, Elias had never explicitly forbade him from entering the tombs. Just… generally advised against it. And perhaps a bit more pointedly insinuated that it was a bad idea. And refused to give Jon a copy of the key the prospectors used to let themselves into the catacombs. Which Jon found particularly unfair, considering how close the entrance was to the Archives. 

The point was, he could leave and certainly be well-within his rights to do so. No one would know but himself and Daisy, and Jon was quite sure her opinion of him could hardly sink any lower. There was nothing to prove to her, and the only greater service to which any of this appealed was his own curiosity. The desire to know for himself what was down here, where the artifacts and tools the prospectors returned with came from. 

In truth, his decision had already been made. He followed after her, admiring the unfamiliar cut of the architecture, the unknown figures carved into the walls. The stone was all roughhewn and slate grey, warming beneath the flicker of torchlight. There was an intriguing inconsistency to the halls and rooms he traced through. Ever changing in their width and height, with some so cloistered he practically felt the need to shift himself side-ways and others boasting a breadth to support an entire host walking abreast. 

They seemed arranged in no particular order, rooms feeding into rooms, connecting to long corridors that Jon couldn’t convince himself fit together appropriately. Turns that were too sharp, or too curving and slow, wandering far beyond the bounds any sensible structure would hold. 

He had to step cautiously over the mutilated remains of creatures Daisy had already begun to leave in her wake, apparently unbothered by the lack of a light source as Jon still carried the only torch between them. But then he supposed she was probably used to it. Fighting alone. There was a rumor she used to have a partner. He imagined asking her, and just as quickly imagined her shoving him up against a wall again. The tip of her spear tapping along his neck, digging deeper and deeper into his meat.

At least the tales of these places being bloody mazes were proving themselves to be accurate. Liberal sprays of artery-red blood marked the path Daisy had routed, accompanied by similarly liberal chunks of unidentifiable masses of… flesh, perhaps. Bristles of fur along little curls of flayed skin. Some of the bodies, loose limbed and slumped haphazardly along the corridors, were still recognizable. 

Daisy was wrenching her spear out of the unfortunate innards of a beast when Jon caught up to her. Aside from the way her leathers glistened and dripped with blood, she looked generally unphased. Something about the image took him off guard, but it wasn’t until he watched her lick blood off her lips that he realized she was missing the customary mask hunters pull to cover their faces. 

“About time,” she commented lightly, shivering her weapon until a snared piece of meat dropped off from it onto the ground. “Thought you’d taken me up on my offer.” 

“I asked to come here,” Jon answered. 

“Plenty of people don’t know what it is they’re really asking for,” she said.

Jon pursed his lips. “I know what I’m doing.” 

At that, Daisy gave a loping sort of shrug, fluid and overt. “Not my place to say.” 

There was a breadth of experience between them that Jon felt keenly at times. She’d been down here before. Had been participating in the Hunt for- he didn’t know how long. It didn’t seem that she could be much older than himself, but she’d had her reputation long established before he’d joined the Institute. 

“How far down will you take me?” he asked. He watched her roll her sleeve up with well-practiced ease and draw a vial from her leathers. 

“Won’t be much further now,” she replied. Jon tried not to project his disappointment too fervently, but something must have shown from the way she met his gaze, a corner of her mouth quirked. “Were you wanting to go deeper?” 

“Where do you generally find the- the phantasms, and such?” 

There was something about the way her eyes lidded and went heavy as she pushed the plunger on the vial. As he watched red slip smoothly beneath her skin, to join the rest of the pounding rush that must go through her. 

“Not for a while,” she said, her voice a long, satisfied sigh. Daisy dropped the empty glass to the floor and shattered it with a boot. “Is that what you’re after? Are the scholars not sharing their toys with you? Maybe you should learn to play nice with others.” 

“You’re one to talk,” he complained, and Daisy snorted. “I don’t- I don’t _need_ one of my own, though, of course, I wouldn’t say _no_ to having my-” He stopped, annoyed at how pleased she looked, as if she’d caught him out in something. “I just want to know where they come from.” 

“Isn’t that the question of the century. If I had to guess, I’d say they sulked around the gardens of some dead man or another, making a right pest of themselves, and now we think they’re god-touched.” 

“Well it’s a good thing no one’s asking you to guess,” Jon snapped. 

“Good thing. I only get asked to put myself at risk to satisfy someone else’s curiosity.”

“You would have come down here regardless of whether or not I asked you.” 

There was a taut, strained tension in the silence that settled on them then. Daisy staring at him and Jon refusing to let himself look away. The wet of her leathers glimmered and caught light when she strode purposefully towards him. 

“You’re a liability, Sims,” she told him quietly. “As long as you’re down here with me, I have two backs I have to watch out for.” 

“Is that why you don’t have a partner anymore?” 

Daisy’s eyes widened fractionally, and lord, he could hear her the creak her gloves made when her fist tightened around the hilt of her spear. Leather slipping against leather, soaked and slick. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to say something so truly idiotic, and he very much expected his remains to soon be joining the rest of her massacred prey on the floor. 

“Stay with me this time,” she said. “Since you aren’t defenseless.”

“Not, uh, not worried about what Elias has to say about it anymore?” A weak argument. A pathetic argument. Daisy looked like she agreed. 

“Those of us who know what’s down here – we know the risk. People get lost down here. People die.” She ran a finger down the trail his blood once tracked, along his neck, and he felt the wet smear she left behind. “Subordinates. Friends. Partners.” 

As if Jon was a stranger to death. As if he’d somehow lived a life untouched by the Hunt. 

“Fine,” he said shortly. “But if you find me- capable, then-”

“Then we go down as far as you like,” she promised. 

It was fairly obvious how unlikely she found that prospect to be. Even so, it was the most he could ask for in this situation, and he did his best to keep apace with her when she turned her back to him and began to guide them further into the tombs. 

Jon found himself becoming disoriented after only a few more intersections, following Daisy as she chose paths according some internal logic she didn’t deign to share with him. Even when he asked. It left a tight prickling along the back of his neck, thinking of all those unexplored halls they simply walked past. What could be in them. It made him itch to turn around and demand they go through them all. 

An itch that he was only somewhat able to subdue by the sheer fact that he didn’t have time to indulge it fully. Daisy had begun to go faster. Hunting. And there was prey aplenty down here for her to chase. Proving herself right – that she was more than capable of keeping both of them alive, tearing beasts and other creatures (they almost looked human) to sanguineous ribbons before they had even the chance to scurry past her and reach Jon. 

She took her fair share of beatings as well. Jon kept a steady count of how many times she pulled a vial free. Watched her shaking hands collect more blood from the eviscerated bodies she left behind. He was watching her do just that, the two of them on the cusp of a stonework tunnel. Standing before a steep drop, where the path turned to cavernous dirt and hanging root. 

“Have you ever considered exploring one of these places in its entirety?” he asked, trying to sound casual rather than critical. Daisy looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he suspected he failed. 

“No.” He tried not to be disappointed in her succinct answer. “There’d be no point to it. A waste of time.” 

“Well. I can think of a few reasons to do so. Clearing out some of the creatures for the next time you come down-”

“They always come back.” 

“Then a map, perhaps? To give you more than your instinct to go off of. We’ve run into more than our fair share of dead ends already.” 

“These dungeons change after a while,” Daisy said. She wasn’t even looking at him, rooting around in the innards of a beast with a transfusion line.

“I beg your pardon?” 

She gave an exasperated sigh. “The layout – you know, the halls and rooms – change. After a while.” 

“I know what a layout is,” Jon snapped. “I just- I don’t see how-”

“Believe what you want. It doesn’t matter to me.” She must have found something full of blood in the beast, as the line connected to her arm suddenly ran red and she let out a long, satisfied breath of air. 

“Do you have to do that?” It was disgusting. Taking blood right from a beast, uncleansed by the Church. 

“If you want to keep going, yes, I do,” she said. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t understand. Bouchard doesn’t like his little cult to use blood without his say-so, right? Control freak.” 

“We aren’t a cult.” A phrase Jon had found himself using with surprising frequency. “We are a well-respected- Stop laughing.” 

“Whatever you say.”

“Well you’re hardly one to talk – you work for the Institute, too,” he accused, and found himself stepping back in shock when Daisy pulled herself to her feet in a smooth motion, letting the needle in her arm rip itself free as she whirled on him. 

“Don’t compare me to you and the rest of your merry little band of sycophants,” she growled, menacing him backwards until his back hit a wall - _again_. “I have my own reasons for what I do, and it’s not because Elias fucking Bouchard is asking me to.” 

“Right. Except for when you do exactly what Elias asks you to anyway.” 

This time, both of her hands – slick and wet with gore – fisted in the front of his clothing, and his chest rattled when she slammed him back into the hard stone. 

“I can still leave you down here, Sims,” she said. “I could kill you right now.” 

“But you won’t. Because Elias will-”

“Hiding behind your boss again? You should know that won’t protect you from anything here but me.” She pushed him tighter against the wall, stepping in closer to him. “You’re even more pathetic than I am. Why do you listen to him, Jon? What does he have over you?” 

Jon studied her, the cast of her features, trying to suss out what she was saying. “I- Over me? What does he have-”

“Forget it.” 

She dropped him to his feet so suddenly he nearly stumbled, and was already walking down into the tunnel in the short time it took him to recover. 

“Daisy! Daisy, wait!” 

“I’m not interested in talking any more, Sims.”

He scrambled hurriedly forward in as quick of a controlled descend as could be managed. The slope of the earth grew steeper, Jon’s ankles aching as he chased after her, trying to keep his balance. Above his head the ends of roots grew long and thick and tangled, their trailing ends brushing against him like frayed strings. 

“Daisy, wait, damn it!” 

“Keep up or don’t!” she called back, and Jon actually had to take a moment to thoroughly roll his eyes at the situation. 

Well while he was running after her, he could chew over what she had said. _What does he have over you_. Clearly implying that Elias had something over _Daisy_ and- if Jon was honest, a bit of blackmail hardly seemed out of character. But what possible blackmail would he have over someone like Daisy? 

At least he couldn’t lose her. The tunnel seemed content to drive itself into the ground though paradoxically, Jon thought he could perhaps see better down here. As if it were being gently lit by the light of something other than his torch. Which was ridiculous. His eyes had probably adjusted to the dark, and he was attributing it to something else, distracting himself when he really should be thinking about Daisy and-

And paying to where he was going, as he stumbled over– something, a root, or a rock? Something tangled about his boot, his own momentum twisting it, so that he made the rest of his descent much more rapidly. And with much more painful tumbling. 

The force of his landing was enough to knock the air out of his lungs, the torch skittering away as it was knocked free of his hand. Great. Just what he needed to really make the best of his day. A part of him considered lying where he’d fallen face first in the dirt and perhaps never moving again. Jon groaned, rolling himself to at least be able to see a bit of where he’d ended up. 

Greeted by the sight of a massive, yawning gallery, entirely aglow in the soft bioluminescence of the… moss, he thought it was, that grew along its rough cragged walls. Mixed with strange streamers of foreign foliage, tightly grouped plants Jon didn’t recognize, shimmering vines spilling over themselves in abundance. Even the roots dangling from the ceiling were faintly glowing, mushroom heads of stark white blossomed and growing upside down. 

Daisy was in the center of the room. Turned to watch his spectacular entrance, he assumed.

“Gods,” she said, walking towards him. “You really are hopeless.” 

He didn’t even have a defense for himself, really. He’d failed to walk down a hill by himself and it stung a bit. Even if the circumstances were such that he thought he could perhaps be forgiven for the lapse in spatial awareness. 

Something twitched along the rocks of the far wall behind Daisy.

“Daisy-”

“Honestly, Sims, it’s no wonder Bouchard has to assign you a sitter.” 

She kept walking closer to him, as he watched something peel itself off the wall, some massive thing, shapes that didn’t make any sense. Spindly legs – lord, like spiders – twitched and spasmed in the air. 

“ _Daisy_ -”

A long sinuous neck, a lump where he supposed a head should have been but it just looked like a mass of eyes and fangs, its body translucent and fringed in blue-white glowing tendrils. 

“No need to thank me. Seeing you knock yourself to the ground where you belong is reward enough.” 

“Daisy!” 

The thing was skittering towards them, weaving and quick despite the repulsively bulbous nature of its form. It reminded Jon of some kind of insect. As if it had picked and chosen the pieces of itself from a selection of others. 

Daisy reached out a hand to help him up and Jon reached out to grab it. He yanked her down to himself instead, ignoring the warning ping his brain sent out that reminded him exactly how pissed she was going to be later. Shoving her to side as he pulled out the unfortunately and literally named Tiny Tonitrus and closed his eyes against the array of lightning strikes that rained outwards from his body towards the creature. 

He really hoped the willowing, tonal cries – like music, not vocalizations but notes, almost beautiful – were from the thing writhing in pain. Daisy stared at him for a moment before she lunged back to her feet. Jon grabbed at her knee.

“Daisy,” he said, trying to ignore how frantically his heart was beating, how he could barely talk around the panic squeezing his throat tight. “Daisy, we have to leave now, we have to get out of here-”

“Like I would run,” she answered. She struck paper against her weapon until it caught, flames wreathing its awful teeth. “This is the fun part, Jon.” 

Jon would have at least tried to protest more except apparently those fringe-like tendrils could extend. Demonstrated by the way one wrapped around his waist and hauled him into the air. It did give him a fairly decent vantage point to watch Daisy launch herself into the fight, ducking around to the creature’s side and hacking away at its body. 

“Don’t worry,” she yelled up to him. “I’ll tear its fucking limbs off!” 

“Maybe after I’m a bit- closer to the ground?” he suggested, before the tendril constricted tightly enough that he couldn’t breathe. There was no indication Daisy had heard him. 

It was a bit hard to keep up with the fight. The creature skittered and stomped, thrusting its sharp-edged limbs at Daisy’s form. It must have been some type of kin – Jon almost wanted to find a way to keep it intact, maybe drag it to the surface with them after it had been subdued. Arcane elements blazed hotly inside it, the telling crackle of ozone in the air, white beams of light summoned by whatever means it possessed. 

Daisy seemed to be doing well enough. Those musical cries filled the air, shook trickles of loose dirt free from the ceiling and walls. He could hear some carapace cracking beneath her assault, the wet squish of soft meat and then, suddenly, he was being flung through the air. 

Pinned to a bloody wall, again, lord. The world spun briefly as the back of his skull bashed against rock. He’d thought the limb holding him severed, but it was still tight around his stomach, forcing him against the wall. And then dragging him down it, Jon crying out as the small, sharp upwardly jutting rocks of the wall sliced through the cloth of his shirt and jacket, gouging into the flesh below. 

Down, and down, and down, until his back felt less like solid muscle and skin than strips of dangling meat and abruptly the limb went slack, sending him to the ground with it. He thought he heard Daisy say his name in the brief instance before the world shuttered into black. 

 

 

 

Jon came to with his arm tossed across Daisy’s shoulders, one of her own wrapped around his waist and her hand digging into his side. His back felt like it was on fire, his body strangely cool and shivering. 

“We’re almost there,” she said, her hand tightening when he tried to shift away. “You’re more bearable when you’re unconscious.” 

“That’s not- the first time I’ve been told that,” he managed to gasp out between the quiet, involuntary hurt sounds most movement inspired. 

She snorted, a gesture he could feel as her chest moved up and down so close to him. “’Not surprised.” 

She was dragging him out into the hall that would lead to the Archives, Jon finally realized. It was rather alarming how comforting he found the thought of returning to his office. Sinking into a statement, letting it take him away from the insistent, throbbing ache of his own physicality. But they passed the door to the Archives, the door that he knew would leave to safety, to security-

“Where- ah, where are we going?” 

“Where do you think?” It sounded as if she thought her reasoning entirely self-evident. “I’m taking you to Bouchard. He can worry about getting you patched up.” 

Shit. “Wait- Don’t-”

His attempt to dig his heels in was met with Daisy ignoring his efforts entirely and simply hauling him forward. “Sims.” 

“Stop- Just, listen to me, please?” 

“We can talk and walk at the same time.” 

“I-I can’t go to Elias,” he admitted, and that, finally, was enough to halt her. She shoved him off of herself so she could eye him from a proper distance, staring at him silently until he was forced to continue. “He, uh- I might not have gotten the… appropriate, ah, clearance to-”

“Of all the times you choose to grow a bloody spine for yourself.” She crossed her arms, looking mostly unimpressed as Jon staggered against the wall. “…This might be the closest I’ve ever come to liking you.” 

“Uh, thank you? I think.” 

“Don’t ruin it.” 

Jon sighed. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, willing the throbbing in it to cease. Or at least lessen enough to clear his thoughts somewhat. He heard the shifting of Daisy’s leathers as she fidgeted. 

“So, what do you want to do then?” she prompted. “I can take you back to your quarters. Surely you can come up with a reason to hermit yourself away for a few days.” 

“No, I- I think I’d like to go to the Archives.” 

She made a disbelieving noise somewhere in her throat and Jon opened his eyes again to find her shaking her head. “Of course you do. Archivist.” 

“I- It’ll give me some time to- to think.”

“Sure.” It sounded like she was just placating him, which was probably fair. He should want to go curl in a ball in his bedding and hide there until back stopped pulsing with ache every beat of his heart. 

“There might be something in the library about- about what we fought down there,” he reasoned. “I just- I just need to sit down for a bit.”

“Right. Whatever you want.” 

Jon didn’t think she liked him very much anymore. She still hauled him back into her side, supporting him as he stumbled unsteadily towards his office. 

He had no idea what time it might be – they’d entered into the catacombs just after sundown, once Jon was certain his assistants had cleared out for the night. The lights were on but the offices themselves seemed unoccupied, and Jon couldn’t hear any of the sounds he’d begun to think of as _normal_ for around the Archives. Sasha and Tim’s quiet voices murmuring together, dishes clattering discreetly in the breakroom as Martin started a kettle. 

It was- strange. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to associate this place with its people as well. It made him feel like it must be late, that he should be locking things up for the night long after his employees had already left. The fact that the Archives were, generally speaking, underground was not helping matters. 

Daisy helped to steady him as he searched in his pockets for the key to his office. His hands were filthy, with dirt and dried blood, his sleeves stained a variety of unappealing colors. The dark red, almost brown, of beasts’ blood. The unnatural silver of kins’. His hand was shaking badly enough that he missed the key hole, had to slide the key awkwardly into the opening before letting them in.

“Did you kill it?” he asked as they eased into the room.

Daisy didn’t reply until she had led him around his desk and dropped him bodily into his chair. He hissed at the impact of his back against it, jerking himself forward. Daisy smirked and perched herself on the edge of his desk.

“Yes,” she replied. She removed her cap, shivering a hand through the loose ponytail she wore her hair in. Jon frowned at the droplets of blood inspired by the movement. “’Course I did. What kind of hunter do you take me for?” 

“That could have been- valuable, to our research,” Jon said. His heart wasn’t in the complaint, though, as he rested his elbows on the desk and buried his face between his hands. He drew his shoulders up, stretching his spine, vocalizing uncomfortably at the irritation of nerve endings in his back. 

Daisy made a quiet hum of assent. Jon flinched when he felt one of her fingers on the back of his shoulder, gingerly peeling away a tattered remnant of his clothing. Her touch moved to his skin, tracing the upper edges of what had been left intact. It left Jon shuddering at the disharmonious brash of sensory input. The featherlight drift of her gloved fingers across unbroken flesh, the resultant pain from damaged muscle twitching and pulling below it. 

“How- How does it look?” Jon wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. 

“Not good. How does it feel?” 

Jon gave a short laugh. “Not good.” 

There was a little sound of amusement from her, then, that made Jon drag his face out of his hands and look up at her. Daisy had a small smile he found himself returning. Arguably the nicest moment he’d ever shared with the hunter. Her fingers on his back suddenly twitched downward, dipped into the gouges on his back while he flinched forward. 

“Oops.” Not even an attempt at sincerity. He scowled at her as she drew her hand away from him. She reached into the inside of her jacket and pulled a blood vial free. Placed it on the desk before him. “You might as well.” 

His gaze dropped to it, a stone to the bottom of a lake. The viscous, bright red pool of fluid, the thick sheen of it around the inside of the glass where it had sloshed and jostled above its volume. It wasn’t anything Jon had much occasion use. The Archives were, generally and relatively speaking, safe. Barring a few unusual, extenuating circumstances. 

He could still remember the sensation of it. The cool rush of unfamiliar blood in his veins – or down his throat, once, an emergency measure while Elias had held the vial to his lips, supported his head as he tilted it back, touching his jaw. The salt and copper tang of it in his mouth and Elias’ fingers chasing its path down his throat. 

His flesh, knitting itself together again. Jon remembered feeling them draw closed from the bottom up, the base of his wounds filling with new flesh, puckering with pale scar tissue when he’d waited too long to treat them. 

If he acted now, his back might not even scar. It felt swollen and hot and ripped, wet with sweat and blood. He thought of that blood pulsing through him. Pictured Daisy in the catacombs, the satisfied lidding of her eyes. 

“No.” Jon shoved the vial away from himself, knocking it to rolling. Daisy’s hand darted out to catch it again. “I-I can’t.” 

“Because Bouchard tells you not to? Gods above.” She leaned over, stamping the blood back down squarely before him. “There’s no reason he has to know about it. What you do on your own bloody time is your business.” 

“Trust me, Daisy, Elias would know. He’d find someway to- to figure it out.” Paranoid. He expected to hear it. He probably would even deserve to. 

Instead, Daisy scoffed. “You’d probably just cave and tell him the first moment you saw him.” 

“He wouldn’t need to.” Another voice joined their conversation and both of them startled. Jon’s gaze snapped up to the open door to his office and Daisy jerked herself around the same direction. “Elias does have that… uncanny way of knowing things, doesn’t he? One of his more unsettling attributes.”

Peter Lukas strolled further into the room and lord, Jon had not realized there was a person he wanted to see less at this moment than Elias. 

“Both of you?” Daisy sounded a bit less exasperated, now. A bit more disgusted. 

“Mr. Lukas-”

“Jon, please,” Peter interrupted with a smile. “Call me Peter.” 

Jon released a tense, irritated breath through his teeth. “…Peter. What are you doing here?” 

“Now, that’s no way to address a guest.” Peter sat himself in the chair across from Jon’s desk. Jon straightened minutely, trying not to think of exactly how much of a mess both he and Daisy appeared at the moment. “Care to try that again?” 

“How about I give it a go?” Daisy asked, leaning towards Peter. 

He looked eager for the prospect, sharp-eyed with an acutely angled smile. “By all means.” 

“Fuck off-”

“Daisy, please.” Jon snatched at her arm, annoyed but generally unsurprised when she jerked out of his grip in a short, violent movement.

“Thought you grew a pair for a minute there, Sims, but you really will just bend yourself over backwards for whoever Bouchard tells you to, won’t you?” 

Her eyes were unfairly furious, distaste nearly palpable around her. Utterly at odds with how she reached out to stroke a stray lock of his hair into place, her fingers trailing down from his temple to the pulse point just below the hinge of his jaw. Her gloves were wet with his own blood, this time.

“I-I, uh-” Jon swallowed. “That’s not-”

“I’m beginning to suspect that I interrupted something here,” Peter said. It snapped whatever strange thread of tension Jon kept feeling loop between himself and Daisy. 

“Of course not,” Jon said.

“You are,” Daisy also said, ignoring the way Jon huffed at her. Her hand drew carefully away from him.

“Well that’s all the two of you had to say!” Contrary to his words, Peter leaned himself back into his seat, sprawling in it. “Much as I love to be an unwanted presence.” 

“I’m sure you do,” Daisy intoned. “Must be a common enough occurrence for you.” 

“You can hardly imagine.” What Jon found hard to imagine was how Peter managed to look so infuriatingly self-satisfied at all times. “Daisy, was it? Daisy Tonner, I presume.” 

“Not that it’s any concern of yours.” 

Peter’s lips quirked in an unkind smile. “Of course. I believe I’ve heard of you, actually.” 

“Oh, have you now?”

Jon studied Daisy’s profile, the tight bearing of her sharp white teeth. Glanced back to Peter, who met his eyes rather immediately and gave him a quick wink to boot. There was no hope of an encounter like this ending well. 

“Yes, I remember now.” A pregnant pause, which Peter obviously left there for dramatic effect. “Elias has mentioned you.” 

“A-All positives, I’m sure,” Jon interjected. Both Peter and Daisy shifted to watch him, though his vision of them drifted sluggishly. “Positives none of us need to go into-”

“I want to hear what he’s said.” Daisy’s voice was soft and controlled. 

“Is that- Is that really necessary?” He owed it to all of them to attempt a defusing of the situation. 

“Come now, Archivist – Daisy sounds like a woman who knows what she wants.” 

“And why are you encouraging this?” Jon snapped. 

“Careful with the questions,” Peter said, chiding.

“Stuff it, Sims.” Daisy clamped a hand on the side of his neck, her thumb stroking briefly along the front of his throat. Digging into the lines of his cartilage. “I want to know what he’s heard.” 

Her grip went to his jaw, tilting his head up until he met her eyes. 

“…Fine. Do whatever you want.” 

She gave him a short, condescending pat to his cheek. “I really don’t need your permission for that.” 

“I don’t know what you’re getting yourself so wound up about, Archivist,” Peter said. “Elias hasn’t told me much. Only a passing mention or two of his nicely leashed hunter.” 

There it was. There, that, _that_ was exactly what he’d been getting wound up about. 

“Leashed?” she asked, dangerous, quiet. “Is that what you think I am?” 

Daisy got to her feet, and this time she smacked Jon’s hand away before he could try and pull her back. 

“You look a bit rabid to me,” Peter said. Jon wasn’t sure which of the two needed more sense shaken into them. “I know Elias puts great stock in his… people, but if it were my decision, I think I’d give you a muzzle, too.” 

“Just try it, you slimy little-”

“Please, Daisy, I’m hardly in the business of breaking in pets. Though I do make the occasional exception.” 

Jon thought he should probably be taking some kind of offense that Peter looked to _him_ when he said his last bit. 

“So what’s to stop me ripping out your throat right now?” Daisy was around his desk now, shoved into Peter’s personal space. Properly looming over him, really. 

“I want to say your leash has a name.” Peter tapped at his lip in exaggerated thought. “Oh, yes, Basira, isn’t it?” 

Daisy slammed her hands down onto the back of Peter’s chair. Just above his shoulders, his genial face bracketed between her arms. Even Jon could hear the creaking groan and snap of buckling wood beneath her fingers.

“Don’t you dare talk about her,” Daisy warned. 

Peter tipped his head back, neck stretched in clear invitation. “What’s to stop you, Daisy? From what I’ve been led to understand, this wouldn’t be the first time Basira had found you teeth-deep in a corpse.” 

Tension was threaded in every line of her body, tight and tremulous with corded energy. Jon thought he might even be able to hear her _growling_ , and he could all too easily imagine trying to pry her off Peter with his trachea clenched tight between her canines. 

The worst part was the tiny piece of him that didn’t want to intervene at all. That wanted to sit back and watch how this played out. Peter carried himself – even now – with a frankly annoying amount of self-assurance. As if the whole world was his own private little joke, as if he knew something none of the rest of them were privy to. 

Perhaps at the moment, he just knew that Jon wasn’t going to allow another bloody murder to take place in his office. 

“Enough,” Jon said, not particularly alarmed or dissuaded when neither of them seemed to listen to him. More caught off guard by the swooping wave of vertigo dragging himself to his feet produced. “Daisy just- just let it go, please.”

“No.” 

He could have guessed that was coming. His knees had locked against the incessant quaking of the muscles in his legs. He had to force himself into moving – cautiously – around to their side, hand trailing along his desk. “Then at least- at least, take this to the hallway? Preferably out of the Archives entirely.” 

“But I came to speak to you, Archivist,” Peter Lukas said, shifting himself to peer around Daisy’s form. “I’d hate to have to tell Elias you were indisposed. I imagine he would want to know why.” 

“You can tell him in the truth,” Daisy said. She dipped down low, close to Peter. “Tell him you got distracted biting off more than you could chew.” 

“What an interesting choice of phrase. Are you imagining biting something off for yourself? Because I might have a few suggestions if you’re looking for places to put your mouth.” 

“Stop, gods, stop making things worse for yourself,” Jon complained. Or maybe pleaded. His vision seemed to be tunneling slightly, opaquely dark at all its edges. But it was fine. He just had to- to get them out before they gave Elias a reason to come down here, and then he could rest, and it would be fine. 

“I’m touched by your concern, Jon,” Peter said. “But the only person making things worse for herself is our poorly housebroken hunter over here.” 

“Give me one good reason to make it worth my effort,” Daisy murmured. Jon could see Peter’s bright, toothy grin.

“Daisy, I couldn’t give you more of an open invitation if I tried.” 

There was the dry, brittle bone snap of Daisy destroying the back of Peter’s chair and Jon sighed because, really, it was _his_ bloody chair, in his bloody office, and he had to watch two handfuls of it drop to ground. 

“You two are as bad as schoolchildren,” Jon said. 

He reached out to grab Daisy’s shoulder, to pull her away – and he knew, already, which of them would win in a physical effort, but he could hope it would be enough to spark some sense back into her. Except- except he reached out to her and missed, his depth perception apparently off, and the world swayed, very gently, in response.

“Fuck off, Sims,” Daisy replied. “This isn’t anything to do with-”

“Archivist,” Peter interrupted. “Oh, you don’t look too good. What were you two getting up to before I came in?” 

“I-I, ah, I’m- I’m fine.” 

Daisy finally turned away from Peter to take one look at him. Or Jon at least thought she was looking at him. “Bloody hell, Jon.” 

“I’m fine,” Jon forced out. He groped for the end of the desk to lean against, and couldn’t find it. “I would be much better if- if you- if the two of you-”

“Are you going to catch him?” Peter asked nonsensically of one of them. 

Daisy snorted. “He can catch himself if he needs to.” 

“I’m fine,” Jon snapped, irritated at the breathless quality of voice undermining his words, and then the world had really tipped itself sideways, the floor coming up in a rush before it all blinked out into darkness again. 

 

 

 

Twice in one day, Jon thought, groggy and rueful. At least this time he woke up lying on a flat surface, the pounding ache of his back dulled to a low, continuous throb that felt fuzzed at its edges somehow. His thoughts were slow to coalesce. For a while he just rested, feeling gravity press down on him. 

He’d been arranged on his stomach, somewhere. A clinic, if he had to guess, seeing as he had passed out in front of a donor. No pretending he was fine after that. Which almost certainly meant that Elias had been notified and would be coming down any moment. Jon thought the reproach would almost be worth it at this point. 

If he was in a clinic, it wasn’t one he recognized upon opening his eyes. Jon propped himself onto his elbows to have a clearer look around. The movement pulled at the skin of his back but the white-hot blaze of earlier seemed to have died down. Small spits of pain erupted and leveled back out to their baseline, a sensation that didn’t feel good, of course, but was so encompassing and steady that it was almost soothing. Those little spikes sending shivers through his spine as he shifted and stretched, rolled his shoulders. 

“Glad to see you’re awake,” Peter said. Jon twitched, angling to see where Peter was relaxing on something like a chaise. “I was starting to get bored.” 

“Well, you didn’t have to come,” Jon rasped. He cleared his throat, winced at the scratch swallowing with his throat so dry produced. 

“Oh? I didn’t, did I?” Peter slid to his feet in a surprisingly fluid motion. Jon watched him walk to a nearby side table – carved out of some dark, rich wood, polished smooth ornate edges – and retrieve a glass of water from the odd assortment of items atop it.

“No.” 

Peter gave a short, cheerful laugh at his succinct answer. Where were the physicians? “And why is that?” 

“I… appreciate you ensuring I received proper treatment,” Jon began. Distracted by watching Peter come towards him. “But I’m sure the physicians are quite- sufficient-” Peter stopped in front of him and held the glass up to Jon’s lips. And annoyingly, with a stupid smirk on his face, he pulled it back out of reach when Jon went to take it from him. “What are you doing?” 

“No need to exacerbate your injuries with unnecessary movement, don’t you think?” Peter lowered the glass back to his lips, apparently unbothered by the glare Jon leveled his way. He nudged the lip of it against Jon’s mouth.

“Stop that.”

“Aren’t you thirsty?” Petr smiled down at him. Nudged him some more. “Come on, drink up. I’m only trying to help you, Archivist.” 

This was mortifying. Jon heaved a sigh. “Will you stop if I do?” 

“Sure.” 

Jon hesitated a moment or two longer before he opened his mouth. Peter slipped his free hand around the side of his jaw. His skin was surprisingly cool, his palm broad and fingers strong, unyielding where they pressed against Jon’s chin. Peter tilted Jon’s head back, highlighting somehow the positioning between them. The cot Jon was on put him at a level of roughly Peter’s waistline. 

He froze when their eyes caught, a wash of heat flooding him. It passed quickly enough as Peter tipped the glass to allow him to drink, finally. Though Jon had perhaps underestimated the novelty of swallowing with Peter’s hand brushing against the front of his throat. The unique experience of this act being out of his immediate control, drinking until Peter decided he’d had enough. 

It left Jon feeling a bit strange, all things considered, when Peter pulled the glass away again. Peter drew his hand back slowly enough that Jon felt his fingers twitch against him when Jon licked at his lips, chasing the water from them. Jon cleared his throat and looked away.

“Thank you,” he said, mostly a bid to clear whatever heavy atmosphere had settled around them.

“My pleasure.” Peter had his back to him now, fiddling with something on the table. “Now, I believe you were telling me that I didn’t have to accompany you to my own home.” 

“Yes, I-” Oh. What? “What?” 

“Was that not what you were building towards?”

“It-It was,” Jon admitted. “I didn’t- I hadn’t realized this was…” Maybe he should have realized it. He peered around the room that he supposed was perhaps a den of some sort. Feeling free to study the straight-line jut of Peter’s posture from behind. “Why didn’t you take me to a clinic?” 

“Well, from what I had gathered between Daisy and yourself, I didn’t think you were quite keen on Elias finding out about… that.” _That_ accompanied with Peter turning and gesturing broadly towards what Jon could assume was his back. 

“So, you found it less conspicuous to, what, whisk me away to your private residence?” Wasn’t that more suspicious?

“As a matter of fact, yes.” 

“Because surely Elias would be less curious about that than about me seeking outside treatment.” Jon could not sound less impressed if he tried. 

“I believe he’d be curious either way, Archivist.” Peter turned with his arms full – vials of a dark amber quality, bandages and gauze – and returned to Jon’s side at his cot, dropping the items there. “This will make it easier to supply Elias a reason that doesn’t include you going against his, hmm, let’s call them his explicit wishes.” 

“It wasn’t explicit,” Jon complained. Craning his neck and back to keep his eyes on Peter was starting to strain a bit. “But I take your meaning. Now all that’s left is to actually come up with one of those reasons.” 

“…I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” Peter had made another trip or two between the table and the cot. “And if you really can’t think of anything, I may have a few suggestions of my own.” 

“I can only imagine,” Jon commented, dry and droll. 

One of Peter’s hands landed on his shoulder, made Jon flinch with surprise. It still didn’t hurt, exactly – not the way it had earlier, when Daisy’s featherlight touch had been enough to inspire near agony. Just more pulses of those hot flares along his skin, settling down into that baseline thrum. Peter’s fingers tightened on his shoulder before he was encouraging Jon forward, to lie himself flat.

“Relax,” Peter instructed him, touch and tone of voice both making Jon want to do the exact opposite. 

“Why would I do that?” he snapped instead.

“Because I’m telling you to.” As if that was meant to be explanation enough. 

“You do realize that isn’t an actual reason.” 

“It’s good enough for me.” Peter’s hand shifted on him, sliding to the nape of his neck and pinching the muscles there slack. “And really, it’s the least of your concessions at this point. I’ve already gotten you in a bed in my home-”

“A cot,” Jon muttered defensively.

“-Gotten you undressed.” Jon started against Peter’s hand, hissing out a breath when Peter dug his fingers in even harder. How had he missed _that_? “Dosed you with a bit of sedative – just enough to take some of that edge off. Are you really going to start fussing now?” 

Jon scoffed, a quick burst of irritated air. “Well seeing as I was _unconscious_ for- all of that...”

“And nothing so terrible has happened to you at all.” A yet seemed to be implied at the end. Or Jon was just miserably imagining it to be so. “It doesn’t have to be any concern of mine how you got injured. Or why you’re trying to hide it from Elias.” 

Peter shifted, relaxed his grip and pet along the back of Jon’s neck for a moment. Before both his hands were on Jon’s shoulders, soothing over the tense muscle of them like he was smoothing out creases from linens. The edges of his palms just shy of making contact with whatever macerated flesh Jon had left to call his own. 

“I assume there’s some kind of stipulation coming?” Jon prompted. It didn’t _have_ to be Peter’s concern, but it could be made to. 

“Well, Elias and I are close friends,” Peter said. “I would, of course, prefer to keep your confidences, but at a certain point I’m afraid my hands would be tied.”

Jon could feel the tension straining in his jaw, as much as he could feel the tension Peter kneaded his thumbs into along his shoulders. “And what point might that be?” 

“It’s a tricky thing, isn’t it? One of those, I’d know it when I see it, type of situations.” 

“Wonderful.” 

“Come now, Archivist – you’re so tense. I’m only offering you a favor or two. If you’d prefer I can just pack you up and take you to Elias myself, no harm done.” 

That had probably become the best conclusion for this situation a while ago. No matter how badly Jon balked at the prospect, felt his stomach turn with unease imagining himself standing in front of Elias and admitting he’d gone against his wishes. That Jon had, once again, been unable to leash his own curiosity, his own self-interest. 

“Or you can lie yourself down here, let me tend to your wounds and we can take it from there,” Peter concluded, breaking Jon’s sullen silence.

“Because you’re certainly qualified to do so, I’m sure,” Jon replied. 

Griping even as he lowered himself finally, rearranged to pillow his chin on his arms folded beneath. Recognizing now the way his motions seemed detached from his senses of them, the long, low ache ignited from moving his shoulders wholly captivating. Like burning, or no, more like smoldering, a coal removed from its direct heat source, simmering beneath his skin. Jon let his eyes slip closed, breathed out a slow exhalation as the sensation refused to abate. 

“More qualified than you are,” Peter said. A weak retort that Jon couldn’t even be bothered to be sarcastic about. 

“I don’t see how- ah-” Breath forced out of him as Peter moved his palms down, pushed his weight into the lacerations on Jon’s back. “-H-How you administering blood would be- be any better.” 

“Hmm.” 

An acknowledgment more than an actual response, as if Peter was distracted by the way he kept pressing along Jon’s injuries. An action that Jon suspected was supposed to hurt. Instead it simply inspired more of those swelling, rolling waves of heat, like Peter was somehow gathering up the sharp throbbing pain Jon remembered from before and shoving it deeper into him, into his muscle and bone while his body lapped it up eagerly, ripples pouring themselves outward to radiate and buzz in his extremities. 

“Maybe Elias is right about you lot,” Peter said apropos of, what Jon could tell, nothing. 

“Right about what?” 

His tongue felt clumsy in his mouth, his thoughts running sluggish. Difficult to claw his way through both the pleasant, enveloping haze of the sedative – a familiar enough, if unwelcome, sensation, a common vice among scholars that Jon did his best to avoid – and whatever Peter was doing to his back, moving down it and leaving the tissue he touched feeling fever-hot and melting in his wake.

“The youth of today are all blood drunk,” Peter said very much in a way which implied he was reciting it from somewhere. Except Jon couldn’t begin to imagine that turn of phrase leaving Elias’ mouth. “I never said anything about giving you blood, Jon.” 

“I don’t think Elias has ever said that.” Apparently, it was important to clarify that. Peter gave an indulgent laugh. Jon found the sound annoying and pleasing in various measures. “What- What exactly are you going to do, then? If you’re just planning on bandaging me up and sending me on my way, I could have accomplished that on my own.” 

“And when did I say anything of that nature?” His hands were down near the small of Jon’s back now, and even the- whatever was happening wasn’t enough to stop the prickling fervor of impatient annoyance from making Jon shift himself up a bit. “Perhaps you could stop putting words in my mouth – it's a bit ironic, isn’t it?” 

“What’s ironic?” Jon snapped, to another of those satisfied laughs from Peter. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, a low sound of irritation in his throat when Peter simply planted his hand between his shoulderblades and forced him back flat again. “Perhaps _you_ could stop making me guess at what you’re going to do and just tell me.” 

“Now where would the fun be in that?” Peter pressed further down on him when Jon continued trying to push himself up. “Just lie back and enjoy yourself, Archivist. Besides, I’ve already started.” 

“You’ve started?” Jon finally relented with a sigh, resigned himself to enduring Peter’s whims for the moment. Not bothering to ask what, precisely, Peter believed there was for him to enjoy. 

Aside from the obvious, that was. The hot throbbing of his back, his injuries, the way the sensation rose and fell in cresting waves attuned to Peter’s actions. Threatening at times – like now, with Peter bearing his weight down, forcing physicality into him – to swallow him wholly, to drag him under. Jon thought he would eat his own tongue before he ever admitted as much to Peter. 

Not that he was enjoying it, mind. It was just- not horrible. 

“Mmm,” Peter intoned, an agreement of sorts. It took Jon a moment to remember what, exactly, he was agreeing with. “An aseptic. You know, people usually say that it stings, but I’m not sure that’s much of a concern here.” 

“It’s the sedative,” Jon muttered.

“Of course.” Condescending, and said with a pet along his spine that made Jon bristle before he exhaled forcibly and tried to ease back himself into relaxing.

There was a moment where Jon actually believed that might be the end of it, and now that he had a vague idea of what to look for he was beginning to pull apart the sensations he felt. Threads where his back was just- hurting, and clustered points like needle-work where the sting of alchemical astringents simmered and burned. 

But then Peter continued, “Although the squirming isn’t exactly helpful.” 

Peter’s hand was already back between Jon’s shoulders, keeping him pinned down into the mattress. 

“I am not- squirming.” 

“Oh? Is there something else you prefer to call it? Writhing, perhaps?” 

“I am not _writhing_ , gods. Why do we need to call it anything-”

“The first step is admitting you have a problem, Archivist,” Peter said sincerely, and Jon gave a noise of disgust, of futile, helpless irritation. “Are you embarrassed? You’re hardly the first person to find themselves unable to hold still beneath my attentions.” 

“Lord.” Jon dropped his face to the crook of his own arms. Shrugging his shoulder violently when Peter gave him a reassuring pat. 

“It’s flattering, truly. I take it as a compliment.” 

“I don’t want to flatter you,” Jon snapped into the muffled hollow between his arms. “Flattery is the last thing you deserve.” 

“So ungrateful,” Peter murmured. There was a sudden easing, as he stopped touching Jon for the first time in- well, a bit, Jon presumed, caught off guard by how alien the abrupt abandonment felt. “Has no one ever taught you proper manners?” 

“You’re certainly making it difficult to feel anything even remotely similar to gratitude.” 

Peter came around to his front again, wet fingers on the side of Jon’s face leading him to crane his neck up and watch him. Peter’s hands were stained with blood, with some dark amber pigment in little ink splatters all the way up his bared forearms. He guided Jon until his head was tilted back far enough to allow their eyes to meet.

“Which part are you finding so difficult, darling?” 

“E-Excuse me?” 

“Was it the part where I allowed you into my home?” Peter asked him, grip on his jaw tightening when Jon threatened to pull away. His tone was still jovial, inviting. “Or was it when I got your wounds cleaned? Kept you of dying from infectious disease? Betrayed a long-standing friend to help you?” 

“I-I-” Jon was quieted by Peter’s thumb shifting to press against his lips. 

“I think I’ve earned myself a bit of gratitude, don’t you agree?” He waited, patient, until Jon had nodded jerkily before he stroked his thumb over Jon’s lower lip, dragged his touch back down to his throat. “Now, I believe the next thing I’ll want to hear out of that mouth of yours is some expression of that gratitude.” 

“…Thank you, Peter,” Jon said. He licked at his lip, tasting the metal and salt of his own blood. Something high and bitter that must have been the astringent. 

“Very good,” Peter replied. “Would you like to ask me nicely to continue helping you?” 

_Not particularly._ The answer was on his tongue and Jon had to almost physically swallow it back down. Because he did want to at least try to be- gracious. Imagine that he could at least begin to chip away at the debt he always felt built between himself and those that insisted on trying to help him. And despite Peter’s noxious, goading personality, he was helping him. 

“Please,” Jon said. Unsure why the single word brought heat rushing to his face. Jerking his gaze away from Peter’s so he could finish, “I’d like you to- continue.” 

“Oh, that was perfect.” Peter sounded so headily satisfied that it sent a shiver crawling down Jon’s spine, that he felt through every sore expanse of it. Peter cupped his jaw, his wet hands growing tacky, kept Jon in a position like he was a straining towards him, bent towards him. “We’re almost done, just a bit more.” 

The aching pressure of Peter’s grip digging into him increased until Jon reluctantly dragged his gaze upwards again. Peter was waiting for him with a smile. 

“There we are,” Peter murmured. His thumbs moved in a stroking motion. Jon endeavored to ignore how his hands collared his neck. “Do you think you can do that for me? Be good for me, for just a bit longer?” 

It was the syrup sweet molasses of his fogged mind that made it so difficult to respond. His thoughts thick and slow to action, and so while Jon felt the rushing surge of – annoyance, offense, incredulity – irritation, he didn’t seem capable of reacting appropriately. Unable to do much more than stare dumbly with his mouth gone dry, heat twisting slick and awful inside him. 

“I suppose I’ll have to take that silence as a yes! I think it sets a good precedent, don’t you?” Peter clapped the side of his cheek and Jon felt startled all of a sudden. Thankful that the wink Peter gave him soon after resulted in the proper response of his own eyes rolling. 

“Maybe we could set a precedent for professional boundaries while we’re at it,” Jon said drolly. 

Peter laughed, all good cheer and satiety. “And what exactly is so professional about this situation? Do you often find yourself naked on your belly for the Institute’s donors?” 

“Good lord.” 

“If that’s the case then Elias certainly has been depriving me of a good time.” Followed by a look that Jon found far too considering for any kind of comfort. “You know, that’s not a half bad idea. I’m sure you’d drag in a whole host of interesting sponsors.” 

“According to Elias, I’m usually in danger of costing of us our sponsors, not creating new ones.” He was just going to- ignore all those implications Peter insisted on laying out for him. “I’m not sure what you’d think anyone would find particularly- appealing.” 

“You’re selling yourself short,” Peter said. Just another prod at him, Jon was sure. “Your personality might be a nightmare-”

“Please, don’t hold back on my account,” Jon muttered. 

“-And you certainly let your mouth get the better of you. But some people like that kind of thing.” Jon scowled up at him, and Peter, of course, smiled. His thumb slid down and pressed into what Jon knew was a small, oval scar along his neck. It sent an unpleasant shudder along Jon’s spine. “It’s all irrelevant anyway.” 

“Irrelevant,” Jon deadpanned, as close as he was willing to come to engaging this nonsense. 

“You’re the Archivist,” Peter said simply. The way Jon had come to notice people tended to say it, as if the words alone – _the Archivist_ – carried some message only he couldn’t seem to pick up on.

“What does that mean?” Jon pressed, and watched Peter’s smile grow sharper. 

“Hmm. Not quite yet, huh?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“Everything has its time, Archivist – I’d hate to spoil the fun. Besides, you could stand to learn a thing or two about patience.” Peter stilled for moment, lazily appraising. “I’d be happy to give you some lessons.” 

“Perhaps another time,” Jon replied. “One when I’m not actively bleeding to death might be preferable.” 

“Speaking of which, I believe we were discussing how well behaved you were going to be while I finished up, isn’t that right?” 

Jon dug hit teeth into the soft inside of his cheek until it hurt. “Yes, Peter.” 

“Let’s get to it then, shall we? I’m sure you’ll be just lovely for me, now, won’t you?” 

“Can we just- get on with this?” Jon asked, not desperately but with a certain strand of tension. Peter raised an eyebrow. “Please.” 

Peter gave him one last- he wasn’t petting him, but Peter’s fingers stroked along Jon’s throat before he finally released him. Jon breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He sunk gratefully back down to the folded cradle of his arms, even with Peter brushing a gentle touch over the nape of his neck. 

“Not your best effort,” Peter commented. “But an effort nonetheless, and I’d hate for you to think I’m being unappreciative.” 

For once Jon chose to remain silent, despite the rather unappreciative contents of his own thoughts at the moment. But Peter had finally resumed his spot at Jon’s side, and there was the dull chiming clatter of filled vials clacking against one another as he shifted through whatever assortment of medical supplies he’d managed to procure.

Or perhaps they were supplies Peter just generally had readily available. He seemed, at least to a reasonable degree, comfortable with the act of treating physical injuries. Was it a common occurrence for him? For someone else? Regardless of what he said about _the youth_ and their over-consumptive habits, it was unusual for any private citizen to bother with ointments and bandages for serious wounds when a transfusion clinic was likely within walking distance. 

Peter wasn’t a hunter as far as Jon could tell. Not one of the prospectors drawn into the depths of the earth by the lure of the unknown. His ties to the Church were dubious, at best, but Jon already had ample familiarity with how reticent records concerning the Lukas family could be. He didn’t seem to hold the Institute’s aversion to the use of blood products in any particular regard either, so why all the-

Jon was jerked free of his thoughts by Peter’s hand anchoring on the back of his neck again, holding him down.

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Jon snapped. Equally irritated when the tight squeeze of Peter’s fingers into his muscles produced a small sound of discomfort. 

“Thought I should warn you,” Peter said, “This part is probably going to hurt again.” 

Not a particularly effective warning, as the next moment Jon felt something begin to flood across his back, from the base of his neck and downwards and then the only thing he felt was the return of that stabbing, white hot pain he’d nearly forgotten from earlier. Spikes of it being driven into him, piercing so deep he felt he could hardly move – though he knew, distantly, that wasn’t true, he could feel himself twisting and, fine, writhing, instinctive desperation to escape this stimulus – shoving into his lungs and bleeding him of air. 

He thought of those rising, wailed tonal notes, the ones of that arcane beast. The ringing noise in his ears sounded like it had. That pleasant ocean he’d felt before suddenly dragging him under to depths where pain compressed his body, sunk into him like the cold, leeched his body of everything except for this one sensation that settled between his eyes migraine-ache sharp and spread until he felt his temples might bulge and shatter outwards. 

It ended, eventually. Most things in Jon’s experience did. He felt drained and clammy, his muscles twitching with exhaustion. Like he’d broken a fever, a strong enough kind of sense memory that he thought vaguely of his grandmother for the first time in- 

He remembered waking alone in her house as a child and watching the moon through the gates on their windows. Remembered how he had wanted her to be there when he woke up. How she wasn’t, instead.

He was still on the cot, he thought, with Peter’s hands blessedly cool where they touched him. It was easier to let things wash over him like this, to follow the pressure of Peter’s palms goading and coaxing him to new positions. His voice was less irritating when Jon didn’t feel the need to make sense of what he was saying. Jon allowed himself to be guided into sitting, a slow process of gasping inhalations and pain that made his thoughts buckle and collapse at their edges. 

His forehead was against Peter’s… something. Chest, he thought, with his arms drawn up around Peter’s shoulders in an agonizing position that stretched his spine. But it kept him mostly out of the way as Peter packed his wounds with gauze and wound bandages around his chest to keep him all in one piece. Peter’s heart beat faster than Jon had imagined it would, strangely muffled through his clothing. Or through the dulled slur of Jon’s own synapses, the way most of the world had begun to blur and smear. 

“-Archivist,” Peter was saying. Saying it like he had been for a while, like Jon was only just now registering it. 

“Yes?” Jon, well, tried to say, his throat aching anew and his voice a hollow rasp. Peter chuckled. 

“You can stay here.” 

That was not a good suggestion. For any multitude of reasons. Jon could find them – could find at least one of them – if he was given enough time to think about it. 

“For as long as you like, of course,” Peter continued, as if Jon had added anything more intelligible to the conversation than a slight leaning into the rumble of Peter’s chest vibrating with his voice. “Come on, we have guest rooms aplenty.” 

Jon intoned wordlessly. It was probably an agreement. The noise became less agreeable when Peter tried to draw himself away. 

“Demanding little thing, aren’t you?” 

Offense. Jon was taking offense at that. Or he would, later. 

“Never say I haven’t done anything for you.”

Peter slipped his hands beneath his thighs and Jon felt his weight shift as Peter- lifted him. Absolutely mortifying. Another emotion that tried to manifest and instead just left a blank impression on his mind. Jon tightened his grip. 

It occurred to him, at some point after Peter had walked him out of the drawing room and for completely unknown reasons, to say, “Thank you.” 

He felt Peter’s fingers dig into him. 

“It’s my pleasure entirely, Archivist.”


	2. Chapter 2

Much to Jon’s immense surprise the rest of his stay in Peter Lukas’ company was remarkably comfortable, though that was at least partially due to how infrequent said company ended up being. More often than not Jon found himself alone with his thoughts and with full access to, well, most of the rooms of the house.

“You know how it is,” Peter had told him, just after he’d extended a ring set of keys to Jon and then jerked them back out of his reach. “Family secrets and all that.” 

Before he’d seemingly disappeared entirely, and so Jon was left in an ornate, obtrusive house with too many doors, too many empty rooms. Occupied only by servants who refused to speak with him and who hurried away from him when he tried to ask them anything more complex than when the next meal was meant to be served. It threw him into a not unfamiliar sense of restlessness. A kind of low-grade anxiety that begged him to do something, anything. 

It had him dragging himself free of his bed on that first day, practically hobbling to the small bookcase in his guest room. Not finding any titles of particular interest – a collection of what he assumed would pass as higher brow romance than what a perhaps more common family might amass – and part of him had to wonder if Peter hadn’t tossed him into this room with more purpose than he’d originally assigned. It would be so very like him to take his small, private amusements from knowing the likelihood of Jon’s boredom. 

When Jon could begin to pace the length of his room and back he furthered his explorations to the rest of the house. Stately rooms impeccably dressed and finely maintained, without a spec of dust to be found on their shelving or a stray item left out of place. Jon discovered the study where he’d first awoken, where Peter had treated his wounds. Not a stain or a forgotten fray of gauze to be found, no sign of where the cot might have come from or to where it had gone. 

No sign, either, of where Peter had pulled his supplies. The closest thing to a medical specialty Jon came upon was the wet specimen room sequestered away in a back hall, shrouded and dimly lit in the interest of preservation. Jars upon jars of small creatures with their limbs folded in upon themselves, sickly pale and strangely unbloated as they rested in liquids too sluggish and clouded to be water. A few were almost translucent, facets of their anatomies dyed in eye-catching hues, alien and unknown. 

He only spent a portion of his time with the rooms for which he didn’t have keys. The feeling of surreptitious investigation was soon to fade. No one seemed to care where he went or why, if anyone ever came upon him at all. He could make as much noise as he pleased banging himself against heavy wooden doors to see if they would give. Fiddle with handles and keyholes to his heart’s content and be greeted at the long, empty dining table by a meal setting for one. 

Roaming a lifeless house that was too maintained to be considered abandoned, as if it was caught in a stasis, unlived in even as Jon made an effort to leave his bedding undone and scattered proof of existence in his wake, books left off their shelves, a glass of water on his nightstand. All of it gone by the next time he saw the room, all of it returned to its default state in his absence. 

Futile, apparently, but struggling against the stable inevitability of Peter Lukas’ house – and was it even his? Or a distant family member’s? It didn’t seem like Peter stayed here often. Jon had first assumed the master suite would be one of the areas he’d been refused access to, but he found them in the same state of opulent disuse as everything else. The massive postered bed with its linens neatly pressed. The only sign that someone had ever been here strange wearing patterns around the posts themselves, near to where they met the mattress. 

Jon left a faint, crumpled impression of himself on the duvet cover before he closed the door behind himself. No doubt it would sort itself out without further effort on his part. 

Struggling against inevitability, again. But it kept his mind occupied, while his body was still too prone to fits of exhaustion and pain for him to truly conceptualize leaving. It wasn’t as though the household was unremarkable. Its secrets flaunted in plain view, pricking dreadfully at his curiosity. Jon preferred to indulge in that more than the alternatives. 

Alternatives like thinking about what might be happening at the Institute without his presence. It had only been a few days but he felt its absence like an itch beneath his skin, like something hooked around his stomach and spine and tugging him ever so gently and insistently back. That something was likely to be nothing more than a strong work ethic, he reasoned. 

Or alternatives such as considering that one of Peter’s servants had gone to speak to Elias on his behalf. The Archivist engaged in a bit of private research for the Lukas family, no more than week – Jon had stressed this, after his first attempt at bartering (two days) had been met with Peter grinding the knuckles of his fist into Jon’s back until he could barely think. He wondered if Elias had believed them. Pictured himself pinned beneath that pale, scrutinizing gaze and secrets peeling off him like the skin of a fruit. 

So, yes, occupying himself was the better option. If it happened to also keep his mind away from other subjects – memories of him flat on his stomach with Peter’s hands pressing sweetly inside him, the choppy back and forth tide of their conversation, Peter’s chest warm and broad against him and buzzing with his laughter. If it also happened to do that, well, all the better for him. 

 

 

 

The servants were the ones who changed his bandages. Jon couldn’t be sure if it was something Peter had arranged before leaving to wherever it was he’d gone, or if it was something that had come about from one of them catching Jon fumbling to change them himself. They soaked quickly the first few days, wet and clinging to his back, peeling away stained with blossoms of red and, disturbingly, yellow. Apparently stuffing gauze into bone deep gouges on your own back and then winding ties around it tight enough to hold was challenging, who knew. 

Jon had mostly resigned himself to the fussing at this point. He was sitting backwards in a chair, chin rested on the unusually high back of it. The spirals around his chest had already been undone and he was just appreciating the feeling of being able to breathe deeply. The expansion pulled at his back a bit but even that was satisfying in its own rights and Jon arched into the movement, bowed his spine, rode out the peaks and troughs of sensation radiating thick and pulsing along his nerve endings. 

They were careful with him. Jon felt terrible for it but he could hardly tell them apart, regardless of his usual knack for names and faces, regardless of how many times he asked for their identification over and over again. It still hurt – it was impossible for it not to, when it felt like they were pulling tissue free with the gauze they shucked from his back – but it was nothing like what Peter had done. No fingers slipping inside him or goading, inciteful comments. All of it was impersonal, clinical. 

Jon appreciated that, of course. Of course he did. His entire body had felt like a tense, wound knot of string the first time he’d had the wrappings changed. Anticipating Peter returning, perhaps, gifted as he was with his uncannily dreadful sense of timing. But for once Jon’s paranoia had been proven unfounded. 

He didn’t show up that time. Or the next. Or the next. Jon’s thoughts would drift, aimless while his body was stilled and manipulated, dragging attention to itself in sharp spikes of pain. At first, he shied away from comparing Peter to his servants – as if thinking about the man would summon him from unknown places. It was just difficult to stop his mind in any capacity, really, and Peter was like a particularly baleful splinter dug into soft tissues. Impossible to ignore and somehow satisfying to prod at. 

So he thought about him. What was the harm in that? It wasn’t strange – it was Peter’s house, and he’d been under Peter’s care first. If he wanted to idly muse about how Peter’s weight had felt pinning him, anchoring him while pain drove higher cognition and reasoning from his mind, well, he was free to do that. It was understandable, even. And if Peter was somehow called by the sheer concentrated forces of bad luck and Jon’s curiosity, well and so. 

Eventually, Jon managed to stop expecting Peter to show up. 

 

 

“Jon,” Elias said, voice low and calm and utterly intrusive in the quiet of Jon’s office. Jon started, jerking himself from his papers and swallowing back the noise of pain moving so suddenly incited. “You’re back early.” 

“Elias,” Jon answered. “Yes, I- yes.” There was a pause, where Elias regarded him carefully from the doorway and Jon watched him back. “Oh, uh, come in, please.” 

Just a corner of Elias’ mouth rose as he accepted the gracious invitation. Jon ignored the kick in his chest at Elias closing the door quietly behind himself. Nothing unusual about that, after all – there was often cause enough for them to have private conversations. 

No reason for Jon to assume that he had been found out. Studying Elias’ movements garnered no real evidence either way, but Jon had hardly expected his frank appraisal of his superior to help with that. Elias could be strangely unreadable, a blank canvas of professional distance. There was no way to tell if Elias believed what Peter had told him – and like he’d swallowed a bullet, a heavy weight dropped through the bottom of his stomach as Jon realized that there was no way to tell, really, what Peter had even _told_ Elias. 

Why? Why had just assumed that Peter was telling him the truth? Why would he-

“And what happened in here?” Elias asked, snapping Jon free from his panic spiral. Jon’s gaze jumped to him, and it was something of a relief to see that Elias was only referencing the damaged remains of his office chair. 

“Daisy,” Jon said. Enough of an explanation that Elias nodded in response. 

“Even outside of the Hunt they tend towards violence,” Elias commented. Referring, Jon supposed, to hunters in general. “And unpredictable response.” His eyes met Jon’s. “You should tell me when these things happen, Jon.”

“I- Yes, of course.” 

“I can assure you, the Institute is not without the funding required to replace a chair.” 

There was a light teasing to his tone that Jon couldn’t help but to match. “Are we sure about that? Relying as we do on the generosity of others.” 

“And our donors are so very generous,” Elias replied. Jon could all but see the inevitable swing of the conversation. “Speaking of.” 

“You want to know if the Lukases are satisfied with my work.” 

“I don’t doubt the quality of what you… provided for them, Jon.” The usual unwavering confidence Elias had in him that Jon hoped he had earned. It made him shift in his seat this time, press his spine into the back of the chair to hear it come undeserved. “But you don’t often serve as liaison between the Institute and its donors.”

“Just between the Institute and its statement givers,” Jon said. Defensively, perhaps, even given the ridiculousness of the situation at hand. And he flushed despite him, remembering Peter’s comments. _Do you often find yourself naked on your belly for the Institute’s donors?_

“And you have something of a poor track record in regards to your bedside manner, as it were.” 

“If you’re trying to ask whether I behaved myself for the Lukases, just say it,” Jon snapped. Finding himself pinned in place by a look from Elias which expressed fairly clearly that yes, that was his exact question, and he was still expecting an answer. Jon sighed. “I don’t believe I’ve done anything to cause offense.” 

“I seem to recall you having something similar to say concerning your interactions with poor Naomi,” Elias said. As if to accent his point Elias left his seat, coming around Jon’s desk to lean against it and look sternly down at him. Tilting Jon’s chin upwards with a touch of his fingers. “At least tell me you tried to make yourself-”

“More lovely?” Jon interrupted, uncomfortable with the forced eye contact, the gentle insistence of Elias’- of Elias, entirely. “I- Yes, I did. Try.” 

“I suppose that will have to do for now,” Elias determined. His thumb stroked along Jon’s jawline, below where Jon felt his cheeks flushing. “Now, when precisely did this trouble with Daisy occur?” 

Jon snorted. Glad enough to find a reason to pull himself away from Elias’ touch. “It was hardly trouble. It seems she and Peter don’t necessarily see eye to eye on most subjects.” 

And reminded him of their conversations. Elias holding something over Daisy, Daisy leashed by Basira. Who worked with them, didn’t she, had just come to the Institute a few months prior. A right convoluted mess that Jon found himself itching to untangle, wondering if he dared to question Elias about it directly.

“I’m not surprised. Peter should know better, of course, given his own proclivities.” 

“His proclivities?”

“He finds cause to make the Hunt his business on frequent enough occasions.” Hardly an answer at all. 

“But he isn’t a hunter.” And hardly a question. 

“No, his family would never allow it,” Elias replied nonetheless. “Though I do sometimes wonder if he would have chosen otherwise given the chance. He does seem to enjoy the sport of it.” 

Jon returned to studying Elias, trying to discern what was being left unsaid, subtly implicit. The most he managed to gather was that this whole situation was becoming a headache. 

“In any case,” Elias said, and he touched Jon again, just lightly on the arm but it sent a mild heat flooding along his body all the same. “I do wish you had told me. Damage accrued in the pursuit of our work will always be excused, Jon.” 

Elias knew, lord, didn’t he? Did he? Jon was sure he was staring like an idiot. It felt like he had to force his mouth and tongue to move, to make noise. “I’ll be sure to do so. In the future.” 

“In the future,” Elias echoed. “I want you to think of me as a resource.” Elias rose from his lean, and somehow the trailing brush of his fingertips ghosted over the bare skin of Jon’s neck as he left. “In the meantime, I’ll send in the requisition order for some new furniture for your office.” 

“…Thank you, Elias,” Jon said. “That- That would be- fine.” 

He did not feel guilty for trying to hide things from his boss. He pulled his shoulders back and soaked in the brash of irritation pinched between his shoulderblades by the effort. 

“You’re quite welcome, as always.” 

Elias paused before opening his office door again and Jon was struck, just for a moment, with the desire to call him back. To tell him what had happened – all of it, the tombs, Daisy, Peter – and take whatever Elias thought he deserved for the information. To share the knowledge of the creature down there, that Daisy had mindlessly slaughtered, to share his speculations and have Elias guide him towards an answer he undoubtably knew. 

Jon held himself still, shoved back into his chair until his vision whited at the edges with pain. Until he could barely hear the sound of his door shutting above the thrum of his pulse in his eardrums. 

 

 

Jon was healing. Albeit quite slowly in his own opinion but that might be from a lifetime of having any and all major injuries healed nigh-instantaneously. Being frustrated with his own limitations was a feeling familiar enough – moments where he was forced to stop working to pursue such nominal tasks as feeding himself, or sleeping – but never had it been his mobility, the integrity of his very body disrupted and useless. 

It was patience, he told himself as he learned to wrap and unwrap his dressings alone, shifting mostly fruitlessly to try and take in the scope of his closing injuries. Patience when lifting his arms hurt, when sitting hurt, when days came that even the prospect of getting out of bed seemed insurmountable, when he woke in the middle of night to find that he’d rolled onto his back and high chiming agony rang out from the tail ends of his nerves all the way to their roots. 

Bloody patience. He mulishly hoped that Peter was satisfied somewhere – Jon was certainly receiving a lesson in the ‘virtue’ at this point, even if it wasn’t at his hands alone. 

Martin was concerned, Jon knew, of course he knew. And of course Martin was, he nearly always seemed to be concerned in one way or another when it came to Jon. Tim probably suspected something but he was more willing to let Jon do as he would, and Sasha knew him well enough to wait for Jon to broach the subject himself. 

Not Martin. Who had already dedicated himself to fretting over Jon on a normal day, and now that he openly believed there to be something _worth_ worrying himself over had somehow managed to increase the time he wasted hovering around Jon, bringing him tea and bits to eat (which, all right, was actually welcome on the rare occasion, see above the referenced need to feed himself), offering to retrieve tomes and files so Jon wouldn’t have to overtax himself. 

It galled him, that he had become so encumbered that even Martin thought he couldn’t carry out the responsibilities of his job properly. But still – patience. It was practically a mantra at this point, and Jon reminded himself of it even as he waspishly let Martin know that _no_ , for the hundredth time, he did not need help pulling volumes free of the top shelf. Except for the help of a ladder. Which he realized belatedly that he could have actually asked Martin to fetch for him. 

All of it was enough to almost make him miss the strange isolation of Peter’s house. He’d had libraries aplenty there – though gods knew their contents were questionable at best – and better still, the staff had been more than content to let Jon wander around until he collapsed to a heap somewhere. 

 

 

 

Apparently when Elias had said he was going to replace Jon’s office furniture, he was referring to the entirety of the contents of his office. 

“Was this really necessary?” Jon asked. He tried not to frown too openly at the neat piles his research papers had been organized into. 

“Of course.” Well, that was a fairly standard reply coming from Elias. “I’m sure you don’t mind that I took the liberty, it’s been long overdue.” 

Elias had his hand on Jon’s back. Low towards his waistline, surprisingly insistent. “Right.” 

Elias’ lips quirked at their edges, apparently entertained by his response. “Do you like it?” 

“I’m… not sure?” Jon said honestly. “It’s- different.” 

Not in a bad way. Even from where he lingered in the doorway Jon could tell his new appointments were of a much higher quality than what he’d inherited from the previous Archivist. The bookcases and the shelving, the large work desk that dominated much of the space – all of it was finely crafted, stained to a theme, and most surprisingly, generally well suited to Jon’s own rather sparse tastes. 

Elias chuckled, and his thumb stroked across Jon’s spine. Pressed for a moment over a deep, sore spot that immediately sparked out with ache. Jon bit at his tongue to keep from vocalizing. 

“Different,” Elias repeated. The pressure on his back increased and Jon pushed himself against it before he registered that Elias was ushering him inwards. “Give it a few days, Jon, and I have no doubt you’ll have reacclimated yourself fully.”

Probably a statement on Jon’s general lack of appropriate work-life boundaries, and Jon gave Elias a Look that he hoped conveyed exactly how welcome his commentary was. 

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Jon said. Aware, with a keen sort of focus, of the sensation of Elias’ fingers lingering as he finally walked over to his desk, seating himself behind it in his (new) chair. 

“It will be more appropriate for when you have to take statements in person,” Elias said. He looked much more suited to the space than Jon felt, surrounded by elegant lines and dark wood. “The importance of appearances cannot be overstated.” 

“I hardly think the state of my office is going to be integral to changing anyone’s opinion of the Magnus Institute,” Jon complained. 

“Nonetheless,” Elias insisted, “You are the Archivist, Jon. It was about time your office reflected that.” 

There it was again. _The Archivist_. “This _was_ Gertrude’s office before me.” 

“Yes,” Elias answered. Like it was just a neutral statement. 

“She was the previous Archivist,” Jon reasoned. Still watching Elias for a reaction. 

“She was.” 

Elias’ unfaltering calm was nearly enough to unnerve him. “So. It would stand to reason, then, that her old appointments were entirely appropriate for an Archivist’s office.” 

“Hmm.” 

…That was as close to an answer as Elias was going to give him, wasn’t it? 

 

 

 

His wounds became scabs, became long swathes of itching irritation. Gnarled winds of scar tissue adding smooth texture beneath his fingers. Some part of him was morbidly curious about what it might look like, now. It felt like part of himself had changed, was being changed, some part he couldn’t even see to examine these differences properly. 

Jon told himself it didn’t matter anyway. Seeing the process wasn’t going to alter it in any way. Knowing exactly what was happening to him was unnecessary, really. Trivial at best. 

It was just- He hated not knowing. The singular mirror in his apartments wasn’t nearly enough to catch more than glimpses of his back, never enough to provide the kind of in-depth details he needed. Particularly of the areas that just stayed sore all the time, bumps and crags in his skin that felt wrong somehow. A few larger bulges in his skin that remained _wet_ with some sort of fluid, that ached when he pushed at them, that almost felt like something was _trapped_ within them, that he needed to get out that he could claw out-

It was nothing. Jon was sure it was nothing. Just another part of the healing process. He was fine. 

 

 

 

The lights in his office were on. This wasn’t strictly a cause for concern, even given the facts of the situation – that he was the first one in, that he had locked the doors when he left the previous night. There were other keys. Other people who would have reason or cause to utilize his space.

It still gave him pause. Jon spent too long in the hallway, watching the sliver of light pouring out from beneath the edge of his door. Unsure to what could be assigned the pooling of dread in his stomach, the tightening of his throat and increase of his pulse. 

Ridiculous. It was his bloody office, and someone else barging their way into it without his permission wasn’t a cause to be, what? Nervous? Dreadful? Perhaps the twisting of his stomach was all to do with annoyance. 

“Well,” Peter said the moment Jon opened the door to his office. Annoyance it was. “Someone’s had a bit of an upgrade, haven’t they?”

Jon resisted the urge to turn on his heel and leave. Perhaps all the way back to his residence. Try to restart the day again in a few hours. Instead he sighed, closing the door quietly behind himself and shucking off his overcoat as though Peter didn’t exist at all. 

“Elias insisted on replacing the chair you goaded Daisy into destroying,” Jon said. 

“Goaded her, did I?” Peter chuckled at the flat, unimpressed stare Jon leveled his way. “All right, the goading, yes, but I don’t recall the moment where I forced her to lose her temper and take it out on your things.” 

“I suppose the two of you will just have to make do with sharing the blame.” 

“I’d offer to balance the ledgers, Archivist, but it appears Elias has already denied me the opportunity.” 

“A pity,” Jon said without feeling. He leaned against the front of his desk, towards the side, watching Peter sprawl in his chair. 

“It really is,” Peter answered sincerely. “I’m not sure how much you know about my family – we keep a close eye on favors owed. And favors due.” 

It was easy to gather that much about the Lukases, even with the lacking and suspiciously incomplete information the Archives had to offer on them. The family had been the primary subject of Jon’s research over the last few weeks. A number of the statements now rested on his desk were concerning Peter in question. Jon wondered if Peter had had the chance to look them over. 

“Seeing as that is the only outstanding debt between us.” Jon made a vague reference towards his door. When Peter kept watching him expectantly – an irritating quirk to his mouth, an eyebrow raised – Jon dropped his hand back to his side. “You can feel free to see yourself out.” 

“Jon, I’m hurt – there’s more between us than debts and repayments.” 

“Is there.” It was very purposefully not a question. 

“Don’t you think?” Peter got to his feet. Abruptly in Jon’s space so much that he felt his spine straighten in response. “And if not, well, I’m afraid there are a few more matters that still need settling before our business is concluded.” 

“Of course there are,” Jon muttered. 

“Don’t sound so eager, it’s unprofessional. I know how important that is to you.” With a wink, lord. Jon looked up to ceiling, possibly thinking something up there would deliver him from Peter’s company. Possibly hoping it would cave in and end this conversation for both of them. 

“I’m beginning to realize professionalism is a distant hope when you’re involved.” 

“I’m glad to hear we’re making progress to a more personal relationship, then, Archivist,” Peter said with a grin. Jon pressed his lips thin, swallowed down the quick retort of how he didn’t want any manner of relationship with Peter Lukas. Peter seemed content to let it rest, propping his hip against Jon’s desk awkwardly close. “So, Daisy destroys a chair and Elias refits your entire office, is that about right?” 

“He seemed to think it was time for my office to be a bit more suited for receiving visitors to the Institute,” Jon admitted. 

“Is that so? Well, I can’t say he doesn’t have a point. Always been a drab, dusty little place, and I have to say, you and your predecessor don’t do much to lighten the mood in here.”

“Gertrude Robinson certainly left the Archives in a fine enough state,” Jon said. Sarcastically, because the Archives were a bloody disaster. Peter’s laughter seemed shocked out of him, somehow, a breathless, surprised quality to it. “I suppose I should be thankful to Elias for clearing out the last of her things.” 

“He’d be delighted to hear it, I’m sure.” His obvious amusement was a little disconcerting. But- Peter was always like that, enjoying the world at everyone else’s expense. “If we’re doing a bit of Archival upgrading I might have a suggestion or two.” 

“I’m sure I would regret asking you what, exactly, those suggestions might be.” 

“And I’m meant to believe you could resist asking me,” Peter said. Nudging Jon with the point of his elbow into his ribs while Jon stiffened at his side. “Come on, I know you’re curious. You like asking questions, don’t you?” 

“It’s my job to ask questions,” Jon did not say defensively. Peter grinned, something about him like a beast – or a hunter – scenting blood. 

“Is that your excuse then?” Peter reached a hand out and grabbed Jon by the wrist, tugging him back when Jon scoffed and made to move way. “Go ahead, do your job.” 

Jon turned so he was facing him fully. Definitely subtly irritated when twitching his arm back did not prompt Peter to release him. “Fine. What are your suggestions, Peter?” 

“Hmm.” Peter watched him speculatively. Intent enough that Jon fought against the urge to shift and fidget his weight. “No, that wasn’t it, was it? It’s so hard to tell with your kind.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“I’m talking about-” There was- Jon didn’t know how to describe it, except it felt like the gathering of arcane energies in the air, the pooling of potential before the release. “Oh, you almost got me there.” 

“If you just stopped by to be bloody- _cryptic_ at me, I get more than enough of that without your presence, thank you,” Jon snapped. Only partially distracted by how that feeling around them dissipated and relented, seeping outward and leaving him feeling… strange, in its wake. Almost disappointed. 

“I’m not being cryptic, Jon. It’s not quite my wheelhouse, you know? I like to leave that kind of thing to Elias.” The look Jon gave him must have been properly scathing, as Peter laughed and continued, “Really. I’m not interested in leading you about unawares.” 

“So what precisely are you interested in, then?” 

Jon swallowed. His sleeve had ridden up, or Peter’s hand had slipped – either way, Jon was acutely aware of the press of Peter’s thumb to the underside of his wrist. How it stroked, just once, when Peter answered, “Just a bit of fun.” 

“Right.”

“There’s no need for the tone – I get the feeling you’re going to enjoy yourself just as much.” 

His pulse had picked up. Jon wanted to leave, suddenly, or force Peter to somehow, but he already had an idea how either of those avenues would go for him. More debts to correct, more favors to be collected. He wasn’t even sure why, how it had come to feel that there was too little space between them, how small his office seemed, how distant the door. 

“Relax,” Peter said, and when Jon startled tapped his thumb, where it must have come to rest on one of Jon’s pulse points. 

“I’m fine.” Thankfully it spurred him to snatch his hand back and Peter let him go, watched him put the desk between them with a small smile on his face. “Was there something specific you came here to do?” 

“As a matter of fact, there was.” To perhaps no one’s surprise Peter followed him to his side of desk. “I want to check how you’re doing. Since I did take you into my care when you were injured.” 

There was a beat where Jon digested this information. “Well. As you can see, I’m perfectly- fine.” 

“So you’ve said.” 

“Yes. So, if that was all-”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to do it,” Peter interrupted. He placed a hand on Jon’s back, fingers tightening at the hiss of- it wasn’t pain, really, Jon had just been caught off guard and Peter pressing into the sore spot he’d found was hardly helping matters. 

“What is going to do it, then?” Jon demanded, short and acidic. He jerked himself away from Peter’s touch. 

“I’d like to see you for myself, if you don’t mind.” 

Jon scoffed. “And if I do?” 

“If that’s the case, then – unfortunately – we’d have to revisit some of the ways you might be ingratiated to me and mine. And I really would hate to have to do that for something like this.” 

“Yes, I can imagine you’d be loath to part with one of your bargaining chips,” Jon groused. It didn’t help that Peter laughed, almost fondly, at his declaration.

“You may have a point – I do enjoy your lot.” Not that Jon knew what lot he was referring to. “But really, Archivist, wouldn’t you prefer to keep this a personal matter? A private one?” 

Jon folded his arms across his chest. Tilted his jaw up when Peter’s hand went to the hollow of his throat, his fingers dragging down to the first done button of his shirt. He didn’t shift to stop him when Peter popped it free.

“You’ve certainly been in more compromising positions in my company, and I promise you, it’s only you and me here now,” Peter told him.

“Obviously it’s only the two of us.” Another laugh, another agitating, stomach-churning moment of Jon feeling like he was _missing_ something. 

“Obviously,” Peter repeated. He continued undoing Jon’s shirt for him and then his vest, guiding his arms to the side when he reached them crossed near his stomach. “Think of it as a wellness visit if you like.”

“How are you going to think of it?” 

Peter paused for a moment. Watching Jon. Eyes on his as he slid his hands beneath the undone sides of Jon’s shirt, as Jon felt his broad palms – still so cool, even now – press against his undershirt, slide up his chest to encourage the material off his shoulders. “I’m not sure you want to know that.” 

It felt like he had to unstick his suddenly dry tongue to reply, “Strictly professional, I imagine.” 

Maybe the sound of Peter’s laughter wasn’t always the extreme irritant Jon normally found it to be. 

Jon allowed Peter to guide his outer layers off, though he pulled his undershirt off of his own accord and draped them all across the back of his chair. Peter had a point, didn’t he – they’d already been in far more disastrous situations than the present, his pride could handle a quick- wellness visit. Even so, he had to force himself to relax as Peter unwound the scant wrappings his wounds still required, and nearly balked entirely when Peter’s hand found the center of his back, when he was gently encouraged to turn and bend himself over his own desk. 

“Very good,” Peter commented as Jon lowered himself across it, bare chest flush to the lacquered finish of his desk. Bizarrely, Jon wondered what Elias would think of this use of his new appointments. “I’m happy to see you retained some of what I tried to teach you.” 

Jon craned around his shoulder to glare at the man, but he could only imagine the impact was lessened by how he hissed out a breath between his teeth immediately after, as Peter palmed over one of the rough, angry patches on his back. And then Peter’s hand paused and shoved, leaving him breathless. 

“I would have liked to see them before you left,” Peter commented lightly, as if he wasn’t pinning Jon’s chest painfully to the desk. “But it seems you ducked out a bit early. If I recall, our deal was for me to have you another, what, two days?” 

“You weren’t even there,” Jon snapped. Breathing through the pulsing spikes from his back, the sensation seeping into him along his nerve endings, wrapping around his lungs like fingers, digging. “You didn’t have me at all.” 

Peter relented. Jon sagged against his desk as his body shivered out the last of its sensations. “No, I suppose I haven’t, have I? It’s a situation I’m working to remedy.” 

Now was hardly the time to get flustered by Peter Lukas, of all people. “I- That isn’t what I meant.”

“It’s all right, Archivist. I know what you meant.” 

He’d shifted to be directly behind Jon, running both his hands over skin that felt dulled and tight. Scarred. His fingers lingering over the- bumps? Ridges? Dips and crevices, whatever they were, where Jon’s breathing hitched, and where he twitched fruitlessly away from him.

“You can just say you missed me,” Peter told him, chuckling at the scoff Jon gave in response. He was leaning over Jon, then, catching Jon’s hands with his own when Jon moved to push himself off the desk. “Did you not? Waking up all alone, entertaining yourself in a big, empty house.” 

Jon swallowed. Peter was pressed against him, over him, his breath along Jon’s bare neck. Pulling his hands upward until they were crossed above his head and Peter could snare them both with one hand around his wrists. 

This had gotten out of control rather quickly, all things considered. Above the rapid beating of his heart, the not-quite-panic of being caged, of being trapped, all Jon managed to say was, “I-I like being alone.” 

“Of course you do,” Peter said. Consoling. _Condescending_ worst of all, and Jon made a noise of annoyance in his throat, bucking to get Peter off of him. A mistake, because moving like that bloody well hurt and did little enough to budge Peter. 

It seemed to have accomplished much the opposite, in fact. Peter anchored his free hand around the side of Jon’s hip, tugging him back into the motion of his own rolling against Jon’s ass and even through both sets of their clothing Jon could feel the hard length of Peter’s cock press against him.

“P-Peter,” Jon said, wanting heated and pissed because he _was_ and getting instead breathless as Peter dug his teeth into one of those sore spots high up on his back, agonizing pressure. 

“Relax, Jon,” Peter told him. Again. As if there were anything relaxing about the situation. As if being told to relax was ever helpful. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want.” 

“Get off of me then,” Jon demanded. 

It gave Peter pause for a moment, before his mouth was over Jon’s aching skin again, his tongue lapping across it. “Well. There might be a few exceptions.”

Jon shuddered and flexed, his mind struggling to interpret the sensations Peter goaded forth. His wrists throbbing dully in Peter’s grip, his back sending out acutely heightened spikes of irritation at every nip of Peter’s teeth, flooding warm and swelled when Peter soothed over them with his lips and tongue. Jon was very much aware of how his every movement shifted his body against Peter’s cock. 

“Please,” Jon tried. Unprepared for how his voice shook, embarrassingly, when he spoke – for how Peter’s hips bucked against him when he said it. 

“And what are you asking for, I wonder?” Peter’s mouth moved to his neck, until he was speaking with his lips brushing Jon’s skin. “I bet you’re wondering too.” 

Jon wasn’t wondering anything. “I’m asking you to- to stop _molesting_ me in my own office.” 

“Is that what I’m doing?” Coupled with Peter straightening, grinding incessantly into him. 

“Yes?” 

“And you want me to stop.” 

“I think-” A gasp, as Peter did something, shifted in some way, rolled his hips to make the sensation of his cock against him so much more present. “I think I’ve made that point abundantly clear.” 

“Hmm. That is interesting.” Peter released him, taking a step back. The abrupt removal of stimulation was almost dizzying. Jon was slow to begin to move himself, and he stilled at the touch of Peter’s palm, gentle, dragging down his spine. “Because I could have sworn you were thinking about me touching you. Weren’t you?” 

“What? Why- Why would I- Of course not.” 

“No? You weren’t perhaps imagining someone else tending to your needs-” Jon scoffed quietly. “-rather than my servants?” 

Oh. “Why would you think that?” 

“Come now, Jon. Nothing you make obvious remains a secret for long, right?” Peter’s hand was at the base of his spine, rubbing soothingly. “People do talk.” 

_People_ talk, certainly, and Jon was struck by the strange realization that he wasn’t classifying the servants from Peter’s house as… human. He’d hardly been born to any upper echelons that might have promoted such thinking – it wasn’t their station, he was sure. It was- something was off about them, they had left some kind of impression of being… not. Of not being. 

But that didn’t make any kind of logical sense, did it?

“Were they too gentle with you?” Peter asked, voice dipping low and conspiratorial. Digging his fingers into something that had Jon twisting against his desk, shivering with aftershocks that Peter pet and soothed him through. “I know how to handle your type, Archivist. All you need to do is ask.” 

Peter had pressed up to him again, his cock hard and insistent near the curve of his ass. It was difficult to think properly around the push and pull of sensations Peter kept stoking, and as always, Jon was plagued by a dread curiosity that begged him to let this situation continue. To see how it would play out, what Peter wanted from him. 

“Is that too much to start with? How about we begin with something I’m sure you’ll find much easier.” Again, Peter was there and then not, jarring in his absence even as Jon heard the creak of him settling into his chair. “Turn around, dear.” 

“Don’t call me that,” Jon said, to Peter’s cheerful laughter. He still complied, trying to ignore the weakness of his limbs, the tremble he felt through his entire body after every forceful heartbeat. 

Peter was sat in his chair, slacks undone. One hand fisted around his own cock, stroking it as if he wasn’t in Jon’s office, behind Jon’s desk. Everything about the situation was wholly inappropriate, Peter’s wide-legged stance, the slick sounds of his mysteriously wetted hand as he pumped himself. Jon watched him. How Peter titled his head to side, and back, his eyes on Jon in turn. The hiss of his breath when he twisted his wrist just so, rubbed his thumb along the underside of his cock. 

“It’s not something I usually go in for,” Peter explained. Jon watched the jut of his throat bob with a swallow, the shape of his lips when he spoke, when they stretched sharp in a smile. “But I figured you’d be just fine with watching, right?” 

As with most things that Peter said, it didn’t seem like Jon’s response was really necessary. So he declined entirely, and simply- watched. An avid cataloguing of the clench and pull of Peter’s muscles as he played himself. A jerk of his hips upward so he was fucking into his own palm. The slit of his cock pearling, and leaking, and Peter licked his lips when he gathered that fluid up with his thumb. As his fingers teased around the flared head of his prick.

“Are you thinking about something?” Jon asked, surprising himself with the sudden question as much as Peter. The laugh Peter gave was shaky, more breath than anything. 

“Just you, Archivist,” Peter replied. The pace of his hand increased. “Are you wanting more details? Want me to talk myself off? I think you’re more suited to it than I am.” 

“I doubt that very much. You do seem to love the sound of your own voice.” 

“What isn’t to love?” 

Jon tried to keep his exasperation at least a bit contained, since- well, it seemed rude somehow, as if that was the breach in social nicety here and not Peter enthusiastically pleasuring himself in his chair. A moot point, as he probably didn’t manage anyway. 

“What are you thinking?” Jon asked, and then for some insane reason decided to clarify, “About- About me.” 

“Not much different than the reality,” Peter answered. He paused to squeeze his hand harshly around his cock. “You half naked in your office. That same pissy little expression on your face. On your knees.” 

That expression was probably a bit more pissy now. Jon didn’t bother to try and correct it, if Peter was finding it so very alluring. He hesitated a moment, watching, before he asked quietly, “You want me on my knees?” 

“Gods, yes.” It was practically a moan, Peter’s hips jumping upwards like just imagining it was going to be enough. 

This was probably where he should draw a line. Instead, Jon waited until Peter opened his eyes again, met his own, before sinking slowly to his knees. “And what am I meant to do from there?” 

Peter shifted his weight until he was little more than perched upon the seat of his chair. “Come here, Archivist.” 

Jon shuffled himself forward, bracketing himself between the spread of Peter’s knees. It was as flushed as he’d ever seen the man before, heat bloomed in his cheeks and his pupils dark and dilated. Peter’s free hand found Jon’s hair, tangled in it, held him in place. 

“Stay just like that,” Peter murmured, tugging with his grip and encouraging Jon to tilt his head back. “Yes, that’s it, that’s perfect, fuck.” 

“Peter.” Jon felt separate from himself, somehow, fixated on this moment, the frantic jerk of Peter’s hand, the length of his cock gripped tight within it. “Please.” 

Asking again for things he didn’t know he wanted, and in all honestly, he probably could have anticipated Peter’s groan and the hot pulse of come onto his face that followed. Across his mouth and jaw, and down his throat, a splattering across the top of his chest as Peter kept working himself through his orgasm, his muscles clenched hard and tight in time to the throb of his cock. 

His grip at the nape of Jon’s neck didn’t lessen, his breathing harsh and ragged until he flopped back in his seat with a heavy, satisfied sigh. Jon pressed his lips tight together. Fighting the intrusive urge to lick them clean. 

“Well,” Peter said, his thumb rubbing along the side of Jon’s throat. “That was quite lovely of you.” 

Jon, obviously, didn’t reply. Pointedly. He cleared his throat. 

“Ah, just stay like that a moment, won’t you? It’s a good look for you.” Even as he spoke Peter milked his cock, gathering the last of his come into his palm and then clapping it on Jon’s shoulder. Jon made a disgruntled noise and Peter leaned forward. Took hold of Jon’s chin and tipped his head further up, heedless of how his knuckles and thumb smeared the mess even further. “I mean that. Very nice, Jon.” 

There was absolutely no reason for the reaction that inspired. A jolt through his stomach and heat flooding his face, and Jon was caught off guard enough to let Peter slip his thumb between his lips – his tongue flicking at it, pushing against the digit without real thought. Until the taste registered – bitter and saline, almost brined, reminding him of the salt-crusted cliffsides – and the texture, and Jon jerked his head to the side with a wordless complaint.

And then a not so wordless complaint. “Do you mind?” 

“Not at all.” 

Jon forced himself to swallow, seeing as the only alternative seemed to be spitting come and saliva out onto the floor of his own office. Upon which he was still kneeling, crammed between his desk and his chair. For some reason his mind provided him an image of himself guided beneath it, Peter’s chair pushed forward, thighs bracketed around Jon’s shoulders and face. 

He pushed the image away, because honestly. He had more than enough to deal with without- without all that. Peter, the utter knob, was wiping his hand clean on Jon’s upper arm. Jon took hold of his hand and pulled it back to his mouth. It certainly got Peter’s attention again, which was satisfying enough, and somehow even more so the unhappy twist of Peter’s lips when Jon dragged his sleeve up to his mouth and wiped himself clean. 

“…I suppose that’s fair enough.” Jon was going to take Peter’s irritated tone as a win. 

“More than, in my opinion.” 

“Well, aren’t you magnanimous.” Peter shifted, putting himself away, fixing his slacks before frowning at the wet slick left along his right forearm. “This cost more than you make in a year.” 

“Then tell Elias to give me a raise.” 

“Didn’t even suck my cock and you’re already expecting preferential treatment. Maybe next time do something to earn yourself an upgrade and I’ll consider it, hmm?” 

“I’m sure I don’t want to know what you would consider to be me earning my raise.” 

“I’m open to ideas if you have some opinion on the matter.” Peter apparently settled on unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves and rolling them both up, neat folds done with the deft precision that spoke of vast experience. 

“Perhaps returning the Archives to a semi-functional state would be a good start.” 

“No fun at all,” Peter chastised. He leaned back in Jon’s chair, one of his legs stretching out at Jon’s side. Propped his chin on one hand and cupped the side of Jon’s face with the other. “Were you planning on staying down there, darling? Not that I’m complaining, of course.” 

Jon started. He jerked himself away from Peter’s hand, pulling himself to unsteady feet. Peter’s hand found its way to his hip. An anchor he used to tug Jon closer when Jon moved to extricate himself from his personal space bubble. Jon relented with a sigh. 

“Peter,” Jon said. Doing his best to ignore how Peter’s hand slid around to palm against his ass. And then failing to ignore it at all, smacking Peter’s hand away. “Honestly.” 

“What’s the problem, Archivist?” Grinning and sated, probably in a perfectly congenial mood. Peter allowed himself to be swatted off, though his fingers were back looped in Jon’s clothing and keeping him reeled in close. 

“That- wellness check.” Jon bit at his tongue, considering how much he was comfortable confiding. “Did you notice anything? Uh, unusual?” 

“Should I have? Turn around for me again.” 

Jon narrowed his eyes at the completely unnecessary _for me_ added in there but he did so regardless, steadying his hands on the desk. Peter’s touch had gone brisk and impersonal, fingers whispering across his skin. 

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Peter told him. “If you were looking for a more thorough cataloguing of your… assets, of course, I’d be happy to-”

“Right, I should have known better than to expect you to be of any actual use.” Said as Jon made to pull himself away again, tamping down his frustration when Peter tugged him back into place. 

“It doesn’t take much to get you going, does it?” Peter’s lips pressed against his skin, low on his back. Jon heard the creak of leather when he shifted forward. “There’s nothing, Archivist. Though I do regret not stopping by while more of these were still open. You squirmed so nicely around my fingers.”

Jon felt his shoulders tense, clearing his throat. “Right.” Peter’s hands slid off his hips. Fingers returned to dragging along his back, up and down. “It’s- It’s just- I think some of them aren’t- aren’t healing well. I mean, I can’t see them, so-”

“Must be driving you up a wall.” Peter scratched a nail across one of those spots, apparently just to enjoy Jon’s flinch. “But I can’t say I’m surprised at any of this.” 

Jon breathed out a sigh of relief. It was exactly what he’d thought – part of the healing process. Nothing to worry about. Not surprising or interesting in the least. He was fine. 

The relief lasted until Peter continued, “Probably, I just didn’t get all that shit out of your back.” 

“What?” 

“I did what I could, Jon, but I might remind you that you were a particularly unruly patient, at a particularly crucial time.” 

“I-I- I don’t- What?” There were too many frantic, panicked thoughts for Jon to sort through and put into words. “Wait, what was- what was in them?” 

“Hard to say, isn’t it? But, I scraped as much as I could manage out of you – I kept some of it at the house, I believe you found our specimen room. You’re more than welcome to stop by and see for yourself.” 

His skin was crawling, every centimeter of it lit up with the awful, intrusive sensation that something was inside it, was _under_ it. Jon kept getting flashes of that creature as it had crept up behind Daisy. The image of its sharp, spindly legs skittering in the air. Skittering along the underside of his flesh, multiples of it in miniature growing inside him.

He thought of those bumps on his skin. There was a large one near his right shoulderblade he could just barely reach. He thought of digging his nails into it, scratching it, excoriating it until – what? Until the flesh buckled and broke and spilled out whatever horrible thing was inside him, that Peter had left inside him. 

“You need an outlet for some of that tension,” Peter told him. Jon felt his entire body flinch at the sound of Peter’s voice, tearing him free of his thoughts.

“What I need for is for mystery foreign objects not to be left in my body,” Jon snapped. 

“Dramatic,” Peter commented. “Overdramatic even. Maybe some of it is infected. Or was infected. Either way, you’ll be fine.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have cave debris and potentially arcane kin refuse festering under your skin.” 

“Oh, is it festering now?” 

With that said Peter flicked him right in one of those sore areas, an unpleasant thud of sensation that had Jon hissing and jerking forward. He braced himself to be reeled back in but instead Peter stood behind him, chest pressed flush to his back. Hands around his waist, holding him neatly captive, and something about the situation had Peter releasing another low laugh. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Peter assured him. Which Jon didn’t really have any reason to believe. Peter slid his hands up until they reached his chest, and Jon froze. “I was just wondering if you were thinking of wearing that home.” 

He dragged his fingers through the cooled remains of come he’d left on Jon’s chest. It became an odd discordance, the sensation of Peter smearing it into his skin, Jon feeling his face flush hot. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jon answered. Twisting in Peter’s arms in a weak attempt to free himself. His efforts ended when Peter’s fingers abruptly found one of his nipples – tweaking it too harshly to be strictly enjoyable despite the interpretation his body seemed content to take – and Jon settled on elbowing him bodily away. 

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it, if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

Jon didn’t have to look at him to hear the grin that must be splitting Peter’s face. “Yes, why wouldn’t that be what I find most concerning about the idea of- of-”

“Of what?” Peter goaded, encouraged. He shifted to seat himself on Jon’s desk. 

“Of leaving your- ejaculate all over me,” Jon hissed.

“Ejaculate, how lovely.” 

“I don’t see any reason to be crass.” Except his rapidly waning patience. Jon dug through the pockets of his coat, searching out a spare kerchief. 

“Well,” Peter began, and Jon already didn’t want to hear where he was going. “I would think the circumstances that led to me spilling come across your face are reason enough, but what do I know?”

“Exactly,” Jon agreed snippishly. “What do you know, Peter?” 

Another laugh from Peter, and then the man clapping his hands against his own thighs, hoisting from his perch. “More than you, certainly. I’m not sure you know how hilarious that is.” 

“Hysterical,” Jon said dryly. Caught watching Peter shift and pluck at his clothing, setting everything to rights. Distracted from his own task of straightening up, which he returned to vigorously.

“I like you, Jon,” Peter declared. “You’re fun. Not a trait I’ve found common in the Archivists I’ve had the… pleasure of knowing.” 

Jon glanced up, a sharp movement, scouring details from Peter’s form. Because… that didn’t make sense, did it? Peter seemed to be roughly middle aged, high thirties or so, mid-forties. Jon actually wasn’t a good judge of it. And Gertrude had held the position before Jon for the bulk of her life. He didn’t know Gertrude’s precise age but he thought it was a safe bet to place her somewhere in her sixties, at least. 

“How many Archivists have you had the pleasure of knowing, then?” Jon asked. 

“You should already know I’m not going to just tell you that.” Not surprising. Jon tried not to let his disappointment show, particularly as Peter gave a self-satisfied sigh. “There’s something I truly enjoy about keeping secrets from your kind.”

“My kind.” 

“Archivists. Right?” 

Jon pursed his lips. He wasn’t able to shake the feeling that Peter was having something at his expense. It was familiar enough. Nonetheless, he couldn’t rightly think of anything else _his kind_ could be referring to. Perhaps scholars in general? The academics of the Institute?

“I would hate to leave you looking so sour after such an enjoyable morning,” Peter continued. He took Jon’s chin in hand and tugged until Jon felt more than forced to make eye contact. “So how about a little hint? Between friends.” 

“Are we?” 

“Sure! Sincerely, Archivist, I want you to think of me as a friend. Or more, if you like.” Peter’s thumb brushed over the corner of his mouth before he was released again. “And you can think of this as a token of that sincerity: I’ve known more than one Archivist in my time.” 

Jon scoffed. Ignoring the lingering ghost of Peter’s touch on him. “Obviously you have. Gertrude and I alone are two.” 

“You’re so persnickety. I’ve known more than one before you, then. More than two including yourself.” 

“So you knew Gertrude’s predecessor.” Not a particularly illuminating deduction. Regardless Jon couldn’t shake the suspicion this was all a piece of a bigger puzzle, of a picture he couldn’t even begin to determine the shape of. “I’m sure there are records of when Gertrude joined the Institute. I don’t suppose you would be interested in telling me how old you actually are.” 

“Actually? I’m hurt.” 

“Or the circumstances under which you met the Archivist before her,” Jon bullied onwards, as if he hadn’t heard Peter’s interjection. “And since you’re being so cagey on the topic, I think it’s safe to assume you’ve known more than just the three you’re admitting to.” 

“It’s possible, isn’t it? Or impossible, as it were. Quite a little conundrum you have on your hands.”

“Yes, thank you so much for your help, Peter.” 

A statement that obviously wasn’t taken as the sarcasm Jon intended, if Peter’s reaction was anything to judge by. The wide, pleased smile which somehow nettled rancorous in Jon’s chest. 

“I’m happy to hear you utilizing your manners. I’d like to offer you a longer lesson in them, but, I’m sure I’m late by now for a meeting with your superior.” 

Jon had pulled his undershirt on, was shrugging himself into his shirt. He paused at Peter’s statement. “With Elias?” 

“Who else? I’m sure he’s noticed my visit by now. I don’t doubt he’s eager to make acquaintances and niceties.”

“…Right. Should I even bother to ask how you imagine Elias has noticed you here?” And why Peter would assume that he’s late. 

“Perhaps I told him I was planning to drop by. Or dropped a quick note off with Rosie. It doesn’t have to be a mystery, Jon.” 

Jon watched him suspiciously. “I can’t help but to notice you framed those both as a hypotheticals. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.” 

“I suppose you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself.” An echo of Elias himself. 

“Of course.” 

There was one last, lingering moment between them. With Peter looking vulturine and satiated, a predator with its short-lived appetites slaked. Jon felt prickling and on edge. Defensive, irritated. Slightly more secure with his clothing mostly in place again – something that was quick to fade as Peter pulled his unlocked office door open and Jon flushed anew, horrified at the implications of how easily anyone could have stumbled on them. 

Peter gave him a wink when he left. “Be seeing you, Archivist.” 

The door clicked into place behind him. Jon stayed on his feet behind his desk for an extended breath. He slumped into his seat with a quiet sound once he was relatively sure Peter wasn’t planning on returning. 

 

 

 

It was well past noon when Jon realized that something seemed… off, with the Archives. After Peter had left. It wasn’t a bustling center by any means, tucked away in the lower levels of the Institute as it was. Few enough people had reason to make the trip down and fewer still made it through the rank and file of his assistants before they found themselves in Jon’s office personally, a phonograph dutifully scribing their sounds. 

And yet, Jon couldn’t actually recall the last time he’d been able to work through an entire morning without a distraction or interruption of some manner. Certainly not through the lunch hours – which his wall clock assured him had come and gone – without Martin edging himself in through his door, intent on mother henning Jon into an early grave. 

He paused in his scouring of the latest transcript. It would need to be recorded, for ease of recall and storage, notes complied to more succinctly demonstrate what the tale it contained was meant to tell. As all the ones he’d read this morning had, this one mentioned the Lukas family but only at its peripheries. One of its members precipitating the events in question, an idle encounter that Jon himself wouldn’t have found noteworthy at all, and he couldn’t help the uncharitable impression he gathered that perhaps the statement giver had read too much into a chance run-in before her life had slowly become stripped and scoured of its people. 

The statement itself, apparently, had never actually been taken. Supposedly it was found abandoned on a desk one day, the paper wetted and curled with damp. Jon found it more likely to have been taken and misplaced somewhere, rediscovered again at a later date. The very nature of the Archives tended to lend itself to fanciful interpretations of events. 

Part of him was tempted to remain at his desk. There was something so appealing about the way he was able to sink into a statement. As if there was some rushing channel just below the still surface of the words. A flimsy barrier he could step through and then slip underneath, dragged along in the tidal wake of something-

Something? It didn’t quite make sense. It almost felt like communion, at times. Which made no sense at all. There was nothing arcane about these tales – they weren’t even true, in most cases. And they didn’t come from the Choir or the scholars of Mensis, or from any of those that had come before them. 

The desire itched at him. To read, to record. To know, and pulses of ache throbbed hotly along his spine. 

Jon forced himself to stand. To break the stillness of his office. Circulate the air that had somehow become so stale. No one had come in all day. He’d heard no one in the hall, either, had caught no trailing end of a conversation or comment as Tim or Sasha or Martin hurried by. 

It was strange. Unsettling, if Jon was willing to indulge in that much, which he wasn’t entirely sure he was. He recalled Daisy dragging him to his office. The unnatural quiet of this place, when it was stripped and scoured of its people. 

The hall was empty. All the lights were on, as they should be at this time of day. Not exactly unusual. Jon bit at the inside of his lip. He forced his hands to relax, brushed them against the sides of his slacks. Nothing unusual at all. He’d just- go make himself a cup. Calm his nerves. He only needed to stretch a bit, shake off some lingering impression going through so many stories had left behind. 

He didn’t want to admit how relieved he was to hear the clatter of someone in the break room before he reached it. Probably, he was just glad he wouldn’t have to prepare his own kettle. 

 

 

 

He saw Basira in the halls, now and then. Not every day, but enough. They even stopped and chatted. They’d gotten along, somehow, before she’d joined the Institute. Better than they did now, Jon thought, because now she had her own secrets. Now she was called to Elias’ office, and locked the door behind her. 

Now, somehow, she was Daisy’ leash, and Jon found himself disgustingly, achingly curious, with no idea how he was meant to ask the questions he carried. 

 

 

 

“How often do the layouts change?” Jon asked Daisy. 

It’d been weeks since he last saw her. Since she sat on his desk and shook blood out of her hair. Since her wetted fingers had pressed against his pulse point, titled his jaw upwards to bare his vulnerabilities. All those places Jon learned to guard – everyone learned to guard – exposed, instead. 

“Depends.” She didn’t look up from her work. Whatever it was she was doing. Hunched over the straight, sharp-toothed line of her weapon. He’d had to track her all the way to the Church’s workshop. 

Apparently because he never learned, Jon actually waited a moment or two for her to continue. Which she seemed disinclined to do. “Depends on what?” 

She shrugged, a long, fluid motion. She’d shed the outer layers of her leathers, her vest hung open and loose around her torso. Her muscles shifted and flexed below the white linen of her shirt. “How am I to know?” 

“Fine,” Jon said shortly. “There must be some sort of time frame you can give me- a-a rough estimate, an average.” 

Daisy heaved a sigh and pulled herself away from the table. Her nose wrinkled when she looked at him. “Why don’t you just ask me what you really want to know?” 

“It’s- It’s more of a request, actually.” 

The hollow of her throat was visible, the uppermost of her shirt’s buttons undone. The skin there was sheened with a thin layer of sweat. “Is it.” 

Decidedly not a question, either. Jon cleared his throat. “Yes. I- I want you to take me back down.” 

“Yeah. That isn’t going to happen.” 

“I know things didn’t go exactly as planned, Daisy, but-”

“No,” she said, and stood. Shoved back her chair with a harsh, grating scrape across the stonework floor. “If you want to go and get yourself maimed again, it’s not any of my concern. And I don’t want it to be my concern.” 

“I hardly want to get myself _maimed_.”

“Could have fooled me.” She took a step forward. And another. 

“I helped you,” Jon insisted. His muscles felt corded tight with tension. Strained with the effort of keeping himself from giving up ground. 

Daisy smiled. It wasn’t quite as nice an expression as he might have expected. Or hoped. “Think I couldn’t handle one little beastie all on my own?” 

“Of course that’s not what I think.” There was no doubt in his mind she could handle herself. Leaving it at that would have been fine. Smart, even, but Jon felt the need to continue, “It, uh, it wasn’t a beast, though, was it?” 

“Like that makes a difference.” She was close, pressed into his space. It was all soft blossomed candlelight around them, yellow tinged and making all their shadows curve at their edges. Wax rolling in thick, heavy streams down tapers and dropping to puddles on the ground. “There’s more than just beasts going bump in the night.” 

“…Right.” 

“But you scholars know that.” Her head was tilted slightly. Fingers on the collar of his shirt, tugging it down just a fraction. “You know more than the rest of us, right?” 

“We certainly like to think so.” It earned a little snort of amusement from her. 

“You knew enough for that little light show of yours,” she said. “What do you call it?” 

“What? Uh, nothing- nothing really, it was just, just a relic. Tonitrus. It does most of the work itself, to be honest.” 

“I could smell it,” she told him. They were so close. “Like a storm.” 

“Well. It is, uh-” _Vast_. The word dropped into his head like a stone. “-Lightning. So to speak.” 

“Sure.” She leaned into him. “And something else.” 

“S-Something else?” 

“Another scent,” she clarified. “I’ve caught it before.” 

Caught it. Like a hound. Like a Hunter. His heart was hammering in the cage of his ribs, throbbing lowly at his temples now. “H-Have you?” 

“It’s almost familiar, I-” She rubbed the material of his shirt between her fingers and thumb. “I can’t find it.” 

“Daisy,” he said, a little helpless from their proximity, maybe, from how he could feel the heat of her. Their gazes met.

“I can feel it,” she murmured. “It’s close.” 

“What? Uh, what is?” 

“I don’t know,” she snapped, and Jon would have flinched back finally but her hand turned to a fist in his collar, kept him snared close. 

Daisy was watching him, her pupil thick in the flickering bloom of candlelight. He imagined it breaking, splitting, like a punctured yolk. Imagined the starburst bleed of its black depth into her iris, muting its color, red shot and swollen in the whites of her eyes.

She looked away, at last, but it was so she could dip her head down to his neck, the entirety of his throat tightening as she breathed in. The long sigh of her air warm and damp, rolling over his skin. 

“I don’t know,” she said again. Close enough that he felt her lips form the words.

He spent too long still, barely daring to breathe. Feeling Daisy breathe against him. Jon felt utterly out of his depths, his realm of experience. Reminded unfortunately of every other time he’d felt the same. All those times the gaps between himself and other people seemed insurmountable and endless. 

He raised his hands slowly, touched her arms. It was enough to snap her out of whatever… thing she’d fallen into. Daisy jerked herself away. She shoved her palm against the top of his chest and pushed him back too. 

“I’m not taking you down there again until you know how to defend yourself properly,” she said. It took him a moment to remember how their conversation had even started. 

Indignation bubbled up in his chest shortly after. “I told you, I already know how to defend myself.” 

“Properly, I said.” Jon frowned at her. Not that she noticed, turned back to her workplace as she was. Before he could continue to argue she said, “I can show you.” 

Jon scoffed. It was almost a laugh. “I think I’ve had more than enough of a demonstration of your-”

“-I can teach you,” she sighed. 

“Oh.” That was. That was-

“Come by sometime, all right? We’ll find you something proper to use. You need more than just your scholars’ toys.” 

“They aren’t toys,” he said. Daisy looked back over to him and his protests petered out. “Uh, but I see what you mean.” 

“Good.” 

That seemed to be it. Daisy tugged her chair back and sat again, pulling her tools to herself. Jon felt summarily dismissed. 

 

 

 

There was something very beautiful about these gardens at night. Hundreds of wide, white petals blossomed open, swaying together in unison to a shivering breeze. Catching and reflecting the light off the moon, hung thick and high up in the sky above them tonight. It was dark. So dark the flowers seemed to glow, and Jon could catch sight of the cosmos in its full scintillating glory, a countless winking of distant ( _eyes_ ) stars. A velvet backdrop of horrible, encapsulating blackness. 

“Elias,” Jon began. There was a table – old and plain and wooden – and two chairs, already set in the middle of the garden for them. They hadn’t seen another soul on their walk through the upper wards. “Does the word Vast mean anything you?” 

It echoed here, he thought. He hadn’t been able to get it out of his head since it’d been inexplicably dropped there, and he kept thinking it when he’d looked out the stained-glass windows of the tower stairwell they’d had to climb. Dizzying drops to the street below. 

He kept thinking it here. The sky stretched out and out and out, a huge infinite revealed in the absence of the sun. 

“Should it?” Elias asked him. He gestured for Jon to seat himself and Jon did so, frowning. “I assume you mean in more than the sense of its literal definition.” 

“Yes. I mean- I didn’t mean its literal meaning.”

Elias pulled the chair out across from him and seated himself. The implements of their ritual glinted in the moonlight, the straight edge of a knife long and silver. An empty glass vial. A foggy container filled with some liquid that looked thick and milky, almost, a strange grey color that seemed lifeless compared to the flowers at their feet. Linens, bandages. 

“Then what did you mean, Jon?” Elias prompted. Laying his left hand palm up on the table, crooking his fingers to beckon Jon’s own. 

“I don’t- I’m not quite sure.” 

Jon let his jacket slip from his shoulders. Unclasped the button of his shirt nestled against his right wrist and rolled the material upwards, bunched and hasty, so he could offer forth his hand and forearm. Laid in Elias’ own, with his palm side up as well, Elias’ fingers cinching around his wrist. 

Like this the thick scar bisecting the length of his forearm was visible. The flesh there was paler, like the petals around them, like it was catching some light and throwing it back to them. It was a long line, ruler straight, raised with how many times it’d been dug into and reopened. In the Archives. In these gardens. Jon didn’t mind, really. A bit of blood was often necessary. 

“You’re not sure,” Elias echoed, and Jon scowled at him. Elias had picked up the knife in his right hand, was pulling its glinting edge to be flush with Jon’s skin. “Where did you hear it?” 

“Nowhere,” Jon said. He cleared his throat at the sharp crook of Elias’ eyebrow. “At the hunter’s Workshop.” 

“Hmm.” Elias’ focus was fixated downward and Jon followed it. Watching the tip of the knife skate across his skin, as if Elias was using it to scout out his starting point. “And what were you doing in the hunter’s Workshop, I wonder?” 

“I was-” Cut off by a sharp breath as Elias finally found his target. Roughly a third of the way up the scar, the end of the knife just dug into his arm. Elias had paused and was watching him again. Clearly waiting for him to finish. “I wanted to speak to Daisy.” 

“I see.” 

Elias began to pull the knife, slicking through his skin. Not along the scar but branching off from it, a thin new line. He’d begun to do that recently. Lines of varying lengths spiking off at inconsistent intervals. Turning the blood letting scar into something else entirely, Jon was sure sometimes, felt it burning and pulsing. 

Elias’ thumb stroked over his wrist and Jon let out a shaky breath. He forced himself to relax into it, the sharp bite of pain familiar. Welcome. Elias was careful and precise. He took his time, so that Jon was forced to experience the full weight of it. The feeling of something intrusive to his body, heavy and invasive in the flesh it split. The drag of it as it cut and cut and cut. 

For such vivid sensation, the wound it left behind was relatively small. A breach in his skin that Elias pulled at carefully, tugged open into gaping to turn the sluggish release of his blood into a small, rippling flood. It looked almost black in the dark around them. 

“Is she the one that mentioned it?” Elias asked him. It felt a bit unfair, when his fingers were still on Jon’s arm, gentle pressure prying him apart. “Vast.”

“N-No,” Jon answered. 

He shut his eyes, as if that would help him concentrate, and found himself swimming in a rush of sensory input. Elias’ thumb was petting along his wrist still. The length of his scar ached, like cutting into it – adding onto it – had unsettled the strands of connective tissue that wound it all together. The new cut burned wetly, and Jon hissed out a breath as Elias’ fingers on his forearm pressed in hard and pulled the wound further open, like he was trying to display Jon’s insides. 

“How did it come up, then?” 

Elias raised Jon’s arm up and Jon felt the cold lip of a glass container pressed to his skin. Warmed quickly by the flow of his blood into it. There was an odd swooping sensation in his stomach – in his head – when Jon opened his eyes to watch his blood fill the vial. It was almost like vertigo.

“I…” Jon had to force his thoughts to organize themselves around the dull thud of his heartbeat. The throb of his arm that had grown to radiate and heat the length of it, up to his elbow. His back hurt. “We were talking about- about augurs. Phantasms. Uh, lightning.” 

“Interesting.” His tone seemed to imply otherwise. Elias set Jon’s arm back onto the table. He stoppered the vial before he pressed a cloth to the wound. “Hold that there, won’t you?” 

Jon nodded, his hand automatically rising to take over for Elias. Their hands brushed momentarily. Elias’ fingers were wet and slippery with blood. Jon watched him pull another cloth to himself, meticulously scrub his hands free. 

Then Elias plucked up the second container and tugged its stopper free, setting it before Jon on the table. 

This was always the worst part. Jon looked down at it. Watching the mass inside shift sluggishly in the aftershocks of movement. He could smell it already. It reminded him of the gutter water sewers in some of the more unfortunate districts, where refuse from the rooftops dribbled down to combine with sitting water pulled in from the sea. Salty, brined – so much that he could practically taste it already, sharp on his tongue. A hint of something dead with it, the smell of fish washed up on shore and baked by the sun. Metal like the blood already soaking into the grain of the table. 

It tasted as awful as it smelled – he knew that. And it was thick, a gelatinous kind of consistency to it, strung through with dense globules he would have to force himself to swallow down. Revulsion pressed up tight against the back of his throat when he glanced to Elias again. Unsurprised to find him watching. 

“Hesitating again?” Elias asked. 

“It’s disgusting,” Jon answered flatly. Willing himself not to redden at his own childish complaints, or Elias’ chuckle at them.

“It’s necessary, Jon.” 

“If it’s so necessary then you drink it.” 

“You know that isn’t how this works.” 

“Yes,” Jon all but sighed. “Yes, I know that.” 

“I’m not here to force you,” Elias said. Deliberate, like he was re-explaining a concept they’d previously visited. Perhaps that wasn’t far from the truth. “I couldn’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. This depends wholly on your own convictions, Jon. If those are lacking – if, perhaps, you’ve decided this work is better left unpursued – you’re more than welcome to leave.” 

Jon frowned at him, biting down any number of retorts. Arguments that wouldn’t matter in the end because they both already knew what his choice was going to be. It felt like an action scripted in advance when he reluctantly dragged his hand to the glass jar. Bringing it closer to his face made its scent that much stronger. Shook him with sense memories of the last time he’d been up here, same beauty and calm, same man across from him. Same blood soaked into the table, same throbbing ache along his arm. 

New pulsing spasms along his spine, nestled under the skin between his shoulders. Down along his spine and ribs in little spatters of discomfort. He tipped the jar ever so slightly back and forth, watching its insides shift in lazy, viscous waves. 

“What is this?” he asked. Not for the first time, of course. Elias never gave him a satisfactory answer. 

“It’s a substance extracted in the Research Halls,” Elias said, and Jon huffed at the non-answer. 

“Are you ever going to tell me anything useful about it?” 

Another chuckle. “I’ve told you plenty. If you find yourself with more questions, I believe you’d have better luck asking the clergy members who work there. I’m sure they’re more familiar with the production and harvesting of it than I am.” 

“Of course.” Jon wasn’t sure that was true at all. 

“We utilize it for its properties, Jon. That’s the only thing that matters.” 

“And which properties are those?” Certainly not its taste. 

“You should be able to tell me that.” 

Jon looked up from the glistening… substance, at that. It wasn’t an unfair point, exactly. If it didn’t have an effect, Jon wouldn’t bother with it after all. That effect itself, however – what it was, how to catalogue it, explain it – Jon couldn’t quite describe. Something that itched and tugged at him, that drove him onwards even more than Elias’ unsubtle goading. To experience it over and over, sure that there was some way he could _know_ it, fully-

“Which properties are those?” Elias asked him, echoing him, and the small, pleased smile evoked by his answer- 

“Insight.” 

\- sent flutters writhing through Jon’s twisting insides.

Even with his convictions it was hard to force his body to comply. The tonic filled his mouth slowly, pouring in with the consistency of sap or syrup, coating his teeth and his tongue and the insides of his mouth in its taste. Salty enough to burn his tongue, his mouth flooding with saliva and his stomach already heaving. He had to take a moment to breathe after swallowing, feeling his throat clench and constrict and drag down those jellified lumps embedded in the liquid. He felt them roll down the length of his esophagus. Imagined he could feel them settle heavy and thick in his stomach. 

“Very good,” Elias said. It was dark but Jon could see the pale spark of his eyes. “Keep going.” 

He drank as fast as he could. Pausing to keep his stomach from rebelling, his temperature spiking nauseatingly hot, making him sweat. His limbs felt cold, his fingers numb. The light off the moon, off the stars, off the flower petals that stretched around them and made a white background against Elias’ shaded silhouette, began to blur and tear at their edges, after images burned into his vision when his eyes moved. 

He kept drinking. More mouthfuls of salt, of something dead, of something fleshy, of something bloody. A taste like fat when those globules popped on his teeth, almost savory, almost sweet. He had to tilt his head back and shiver the jar above his mouth to encourage the last of it out. It clung in heavy globs to the sides of the glass before they plopped onto his tongue. 

It was the last one when his body finally spasmed, heaving, retching. So much of it in him it took little enough effort for it to bubble back up from his throat. Jon gagged and clapped a gloved hand to his mouth. He didn’t need to, but he looked up to Elias, the dark shape of him and the blur around him. The light of his eyes fixated on him, and Jon took a moment to be miserable with himself before he swallowed it all back down. 

Jon could hear it. It rolled down his throat in one heavy, bulging mass. Like a water droplet, spilling smoothly down a glass plane and that’s what it sounded like when it hit his stomach. One discrete drop of water, falling onto a still lake. Deep waters. One drop, and then another, and a sound ebbing and flowing behind it, rushing forward and back like the tide on a shore. 

“Jon.” 

Elias had moved sometime between one moment and the next. The seat across from Jon was empty. The table cleared away except for parchment and pen. A phonograph that was already scribbling. He looked down at his hands and thought he could feel the blood rushing inside them being pulled to the tug of the ocean. The cloth had come away from his arm. His scar throbbed and caught light strangely, and Jon thought he could almost – _almost_ – read it. 

“Are you ready?” Elias had his hands on Jon’s shoulders. 

“Of course.” His voice felt stuffy and fogged. There was someone in the seat across from him. Dressed in white and shrouded with bandages. 

“Please,” she said to him. 

“There’s no need for that,” Jon answered. She was afraid. Good. But she needn’t be, not yet. “Just, tell me what you saw.” 

“I didn’t- I swear, I didn’t see anything- I haven’t- I haven’t saw any faces, please, I just want to-”

“You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t,” Jon told her. For whatever reason that seemed to horrify her further. Jon sighed. “Would you like me to help you?” 

“Yes, gods, yes, help me, please-”

“Statement of Evelyn Kinkade,” Jon began, and watched her sit up straight. “Regarding the loss of a friend, I believe. Does that sound about right?” 

“I- How do you know-”

“Statement begins,” Jon said curtly. 

“I- Well, it was a- a long time ago. I haven’t thought about it in ages.

“Actually. I think- I think I just wish that I hadn’t thought about it in ages. But really… I think about it all the time. When I’m alone, mostly. When I have that kind of time to think. Whenever I’m- I’m falling asleep, or waiting, or _bored_ , it’s like I can’t- I can’t stay away. I have to think about it. About him.”

Evelyn went on. She lost her friend, in the woods around town. Not a Night of the Hunt, not to any beast she knew of. Their torches had gone out. The moon was waxen and distant, a vague smudge in the night sky and beneath the canopy of the trees, surrounded by the burned out smoke of incense pyres it had just been so Dark.

Jon listened to her tale – he couldn’t not. Feeling his pulse pound alongside hers, the sweaty grip of Fridumar’s hand around his own wrist. Until they were separated. Until Evelyn let go and Fridumar was ripped away, and behind her words Jon listened to the rush of the ocean, back and forth, the distant voice that echoed across it, and he wrote what it said to him – to them – on the paper. 

Lines and intersections, jagged, deep colors. An eye forcibly closed and chained, blinded. A rune to put to words the ancient murmurings of the Great Ones, and this one told him _I will not see you. I will not know you._

“Statement ends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you were wondering what [milky, murky](https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Brain+Fluid) thing Jon was drinking.


	3. Chapter 3

The days following a communion were always trouble. As usual, Jon woke in his bedroom with one of the windows drawn partially open, stirring the heavy fabric that covered them. Woke alone, with memories of how he made his way there fragmented and disjointed. 

Elias with a hand at his back as they walked along the darkened streets. The heavy key to his apartments cold against his palm as he fumbled with the latch. Elias framed by his windowsill and back lit by the moon, tugging his curtains into place and pitching the room into blackness. A hand brushing his hair back from his forehead. 

Lord, his head was killing him. Jon reached out, mostly blind, for the glass of water he’d been left, shifting up just enough to not drown himself as he took frantic, gulping swallows. Moving at all made his pulse pound in his temples, and being vertical was just- just not going to happen any time soon. There was a bin for him to retch into near the side of his bed. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to when he would have to use it. 

The first day was the worst, he reminded himself. Settling back into his sweat-soaked linens. He wanted to take his shirt off, but he wasn’t sure he could stomach the additional sensory input quite yet. Best not to chance it. He did manage to flip his pillow to a side less drenched, and blessedly cool against his face, even as the rest of his body trembled with a sudden chill. 

The misery would pass. And in the meantime he could finally enjoy sleep that wasn’t plagued by dreams and nightmares. Just the steady sound of dripping water, like tears streaming from an eye, forming and falling into their own puddle. 

 

 

 

His was back getting worse, he was sure of it. It itched and ached all the time now. Those strange bulging spots were becoming more pronounced. The skin over them felt like it was getting thinner, changing in some manner. When Jon pressed down there was an unbearable pressure, and he could _feel_ something inside them, a firm membrane that buckled only slightly beneath his fingertips.

When Jon pressed down on them, there was an almost unbearable urge to keep digging. Rip and tear his skin open and yank everything inside of it out. He tried to remind himself that he was fine. An infection running its course, at the most. At the worst. Peter had looked at them. Peter had said as much. 

Assuming Jon was willing to believe him, that was. He would feel better if he could go back down to the creature’s lair. See what had gotten inside him, take a few samples of it. Do something with it, he didn’t know. Maybe some of the Church scholars would know what to do. How to make an- an antidote of some sort. But Daisy wouldn’t take him down without training and he’d had yet to find the time to make it back to the Workshop to take her up on her offer. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe he could get far in the labyrinth by himself. 

There was still the matter of whatever bit Peter had managed to collect himself, of course. But Jon hadn’t seen Peter since the… incident in his office. That Jon was definitely not still thinking about. Because there was nothing to think about, really. It had been a mistake. A lapse in judgment. An impromptu moment that he doubted either of them was very eager to have repeat. Really, it was nothing. 

If he, perhaps, felt a bit of a flush when he sat at his desk occasionally – remembering Peter sprawled in his chair, remembering the feel of the floor against his knees; remembering that unexpected flash, the image of himself beneath his desk and caged between the spread of Peter’s legs – well that was his own business. And it passed quickly enough. 

Besides, it wasn’t like he was doing anything to avoid Peter. It was hard to avoid someone who was never around in the first place. 

 

 

 

In the end Jon decided to take Peter’s casual suggestion to stop by sometime as an open invitation. Peter hadn’t really specified, after all. A petty little part of him figured that if Peter had a problem with it he was free to come around and kick Jon out himself. 

There was no answer when Jon knocked at his door. Somehow, he couldn’t quite bring himself to be surprised. Certainly servants – regardless of the resident occupants at the time – should be expected to greet any potential visitors, but Jon remembered that nagging feeling of wrongness and dissociation he’d grown to equate with the men and women of the household. 

He was even less surprised to find the door unlocked, the handle turning easily to allow him into the manor proper. 

It didn’t seem that much had changed at all since his stay and subsequent absence. Everything was in its place, cared for and proper, surfaces polished to a meticulous shine that captured and threw back the wavering light of the tapers and wall sconces. Still empty, still quiet – no immediate sign that anyone had been in to do more than dust around the edges of the tables and paintings.

It- had to be peculiar, didn’t it? Peter wasn’t the only member of the Lukas family living in the city. This place seemed to be too big for just one person, even with a contingent of people to care for it. Or maybe that was just how they were. He was thinking of a statement concerning a funeral and a graveyard. The heavy, blank weight Peter had left behind himself in the Archives. 

Could he get Peter to talk to him? Hazy moonlit gardens with a story to tell. He wondered how the ocean would sound between his words. What he would hear echoing back, what portion of a truth he would be able to discern. 

Jon’s footsteps echoed hollowly off wooden floors and high ceilings. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something, somehow. All the halls were lit, as well as most of the rooms. The house had a sense of abandonment to it. As if someone had been there moments before and left just before Jon could catch a glimpse of him.

The feeling was only made worse as Jon began to find things out of place. A book pulled out of its shelf, a half empty glass on a side table, still cool enough to be damp with condensation on its outsides. One great lounge room was littered with plates of partially eaten foods, wine and liquors and blood tinged cocktails set on most surfaces. Chairs pulled away from their usual position to form small gatherings, as if people had sat in them, made their own groups for discussion out of a congregation. 

And all of them simply vanished, apparently. Left in such a state of hurry that there was no one to clean up, and Jon found his pulse beating painfully fast, his heart feeling lodged close to his throat. What was going on? Had something happened here? But peering around the rooms earned him nothing except more questions. More remnants of existence. He touched a discarded fork that was still warm from someone else’s grip. 

Out of a morbid sort of curiosity, he bothered to try some of the doors that had been locked before. They still were. There was nothing to hear from their far sides, no matter how long he listened or how closely he pressed himself to the wood. 

The bedroom suite was open. No dimpled wrinkle in the comforter from his body. No sign that Peter had been in here, either, or the mysterious guests that had disappeared themselves. Or had been driven off after some terrible calamity. Of course, he couldn’t be sure this was Peter’s room. Even the sinks in the bathroom were bone dry, toiletries carefully stowed somewhere away. Nothing to really personalize any of this space. 

Jon pulled the closet doors open and peered at their contents. Difficult to say if the bland array of shirts and slacks matched Peter’s usual attire or if this was- was some kind of decoy wardrobe, or some one else’s entirely. Every line was straight and starched, meticulous. Revealing nothing identifiable about Peter except that he chose his employees well. 

Not that he wanted to know anything about Peter. This wasn’t what he’d come here to do. Just curiosity. One of those nagging feelings that Jon was overlooking something significant. 

And this empty house wasn’t going to tell him anything. Even as his curiosity ate and gnawed at him, there was a more pressing reason he’d come that didn’t, unfortunately, involve turning the household inside out to find where Peter Lukas stored his guests. 

The specimen room was much as he remembered it too. Dark and claustrophobic, with so many small dead things forced to share a space. This place, at least, showed some indications that anyone besides Jon himself had ever been in here. The jars had been rearranged. Most likely to make room for the new addition. But as he came further into the room he couldn’t help noticing how they all seemed to have been turned, as well, so many of their lidless gazes facing the door. 

It sunk into Jon. The sensation of being watched a tight prickle up and down his spine. He fought the urge to turn around and make sure no one was behind him. He’d literally just closed the door. The room wasn’t as pitch black as he remembered. It took him probably too long to realize that the soft, diffusely glowing blue light was coming from a jar shoved high in the back of the room. 

That had to be it, then. Whatever Peter had- pulled out of him. It was same light that had been down there, in the cave. Coating the walls and rocks. A moss that had blanketed everything, had been shoved inside him on impact. Had been left inside him. 

He walked over slowly. His stomach twisted on itself in tight, agitated coils. There was no telling what he was going to find. Any manner of small, writhing creature or growing thing. He imagined it sprouted with white tendrils, climbing the insides of its jar and pushing against its hold, straining its integrity. He imagined shards of glass wound tight in the grip of unnatural limbs. 

The actuality of it was a bit less. It amounted to a clump of blue fuzz arranged without care in the center of a specimen container. Jon let out a shaky sigh, lifting the jar from its setting. Hardly even notable in a room filled with translucent skin and muscle, glowing bone and cartilage. Which was a good thing. Truly. He twisted it in his grip, inspecting its angles. There was a small flake of dried blood on the bottom of the jar. His blood, he assumed.

Yes, it was a good thing. Peter was- Peter was probably right, nothing but an infection running its course. His mind playing tricks on him. There was obviously nothing growing inside him. Beneath his skin. Accumulating and pressing outwards, straining against-

“Well, just let yourself in, Archivist,” Peter Lukas said from behind him, and Jon nearly dropped the damn thing to the ground. “Making yourself right at home?” 

“You, ah, you were the one who invited me,” Jon pointed out. 

“Yes, of course, how could I forget.” Peter walked closer to him, plucking the jar from his hand. “Remind me how I put it again? Oh, Archivist, come over whenever you like, root through my things, come inside even when No One welcomes you in-”

“You didn’t- You didn’t exactly clarify,” Jon defended. Swallowing as Peter leaned deliberately into his space to set the specimen back in its place and then remained there. 

“I suppose that is my own fault then, isn’t it?” Said with enough gently mocking sarcasm that Jon felt his face warm in response. Peter’s hand found his face for a brief moment. Just long enough to cup the side of it, to stroke a thumb across the worst of the flush staining Jon’s cheeks red. “But I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s just your nature, right?” 

“My nature?” 

“You’re all so very greedy in that Institute,” Peter said. “Taking from everyone, never giving anything back.” 

“That’s ridiculous.” 

“It is?” 

“Of course it is,” Jon snapped. Clinging to his irritation, and even in the strange half gloom of the room he could see Peter’s wide smile. “We provide a service-”

“Do you now?” 

“Yes. We do, and not only for the patrons of our Institute, but for our fellow scholars, and-”

“Is that who you’re doing this for?” Peter asked him, suddenly- suddenly closer, a hand on Jon’s arm keeping him still. “Selfless pursuit of knowledge for the betterment of all?” 

“I- Yes,” Jon lied. 

“Very noble of you,” Peter said. “I mean, some people would take all the knowledge in the world, just to satisfy their own curiosity.” Jon glared at him. Not sullenly. “You know what I would call that?” 

“…Greedy, I assume.” 

“Great minds, Archivist.” Something churned unpleasantly, tight in his stomach, and Jon found himself more interested in studying the violet stained bones of some amphibian creature rather than look at Peter. “There’s no need to be like that.”

“Like what?” Jon spat. 

“Embarrassed, from what I can tell.” As if pointing it out was going to help. And Jon wasn’t embarrassed. Peter let go of his arm, took hold of his chin instead. Encouraging Jon to look back to him. “I happen to like that about you, Jon.” 

“I am _not_ -”

“Sure, sure.” Peter all but physically waving off his concerns. “But just think about it. Relentless pursuit of one’s own self-satisfaction can be very appealing, don’t you agree?” 

“Only when you frame it as a bloody innuendo,” Jon complained. 

“You’re free to take it however you like,” Peter told him. Probably just to make him uncomfortable, but Peter did finally release him. “And I have been told I can be very satisfying.” 

Jon rolled his eyes. “Is this your way of offering to answer some questions for me, then?” 

“Why not?” That was surprising. Of course, Peter then continued, “Not all the questions you have, I’m sure – there are a few secrets that would really make Elias sore if I were to let you in on just yet.” 

“It’s not as though he would have to find out.” Hedging without real hope of Peter relenting, and true to form, Peter’s answer was a throaty laugh. Fine. “But there are some things you would tell me?” 

“Within reason.” 

“What happens on your ship?” Jon asked. “The Tundra.” 

“You do go right for the throat, don’t you?” Peter didn’t exactly sound displeased by that.

“Well I don’t see why Elias would care if I know what goes on on your ship or not.” 

“Beyond his own personal investment in the matter,” Peter remarked. Jon narrowed his eyes.

“Elias has a personal investment in your boat? What kind of-”

“That’s broaching territory I think he’d mind you stepping on, Archivist.” 

“The only reason you brought it up was so I would ask about it.” 

“Are you accusing me of something?” Peter slipped a hand around Jon’s waist, hooked his arm around him. 

“Not of anything you’re innocent of.” 

“Hmm,” Peter intoned, like he was thinking. Jon was hard pressed to say what. “It’s not a boat, by the way. It’s a cargo ship.” 

“Fascinating.” 

“I have a boat, too, if you’d like to see it.” 

“I think I’d rather see your cargo ship,” Jon said flatly. He’d put his hands on Peter’s chest, just to preserve the distance between them, Peter’s forearm a heavy weight at his spine. 

“That can be arranged.” 

Jon stilled. Searching Peter’s face in the diffuse light for any sign that he was lying. “Are- You’re serious?” 

Peter shrugged, a careless, easy gesture. “Sure. I had a feeling you’d like that. The chance for a bit of firsthand experience.” 

“I-I would,” Jon admitted.

“Then it’s settled,” Peter decided. “You can come out with the crew next time we leave port. See how satisfying I can be, Jon?” 

“Assuming that you’re telling me the truth,” Jon said. A grudging acceptance of Peter’s offer was as much as he was willing to concede. 

“You’ll just have to wait and find out, won’t you?” A moment of Peter’s hand shifting, so his fingers could stroke along Jon’s back. “Now, were you done in here? I have something of a family function to attend to.” 

“A family function?” 

“Of course. There are plenty of us, as I’m sure you’ve heard. If you know enough to ask about the Tundra, I think it’s safe to assume you’ve been doing your homework.” 

“…Right.” 

“Not that I want to leave your very pleasant company,” Peter said. Jon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “But, you know how it is, right? Family first.” 

Jon didn’t feel the particular need to tell Peter that he- he didn’t _know how it is_. Not really. It was difficult to shake the impression that Peter already knew that, anyway. Something about the way Peter was watching him, perhaps. An expression of sheer contented relish that bordered on salaciousness. 

“Well. I believe I’m- I’m finished in here,” Jon told him. 

“Excellent.” 

Peter allowed Jon to shift his way free of him, gesturing in the vague gloom of the room towards the door. Jon found his attention caught again by the specimen jar. The softly glowing clump of moss in its center, the tiny fleck of his blood. 

“This was- This was it, then?” 

“As I said, everything I could scrape out of you.” 

Which, again, was not the most reassuring way for Peter to phrase that. Jon kept studying it in its glass jar. It looked innocuous, a harmless enough little tuft. What did it feed itself on in here? What was producing its phosphorous glow? 

He clenched his jaw tight, hesitating. “Has it- Have you noticed anything unusual about it?” 

“Unusual again? Still worried after all that assurance I provided?” 

“I’m not sure I would call what you ‘provided’ assuring in any way.” 

Peter leaned his weight against the shelving. Looking, from what Jon could see, delighted. “I’d love you hear what you would call it then.” 

“Inappropriate,” Jon forced out while Peter chuckled. Ignoring the heat pooling in his face _again_. Ignoring the wholly unwelcome remembrance of how Peter looked from a significantly lower vantage point. “You haven’t seen it- it- _growing_ or changing, or-”

“If it manages to grow some arms, undo its stopper and come waltzing into the den, I promise you, you’ll be the first to know.” It seemed like Peter could tell exactly how unmollified Jon was by that prospect, as he sighed. “All right. How does an actual offer of open invitation sound? You come by every time that paranoid little brain of yours-”

“I am not _paranoid_.” 

“-Gets the better of you, and stare at a clump of lifeless moss to your darling heart’s content.” Peter stretched a hand out towards him. “What do you say?” 

A very large part of Jon wanted to refuse on principle alone. No doubt this was just another way to fall in debt to Peter Lukas. But his gaze flicked away from Peter to the jar, and he felt a brief moment of his pulse throbbing all along his spine. 

“Fine,” Jon said shortly. He reached out to take Peter’s hand, intending for a curt handshake, and was nearly unsurprised to find Peter’s free hand clamping onto his wrist, grip tightening so he could reel Jon closer to himself. “So what is this going to cost me? Another- wellness visit?” 

“Would you like that?” Asked sincerely enough to make Jon’s stomach flip on itself. “I certainly had a nice time. I think you did, too. Aside from a particular omission that I’d very much like to rectify.” 

Jon wasn’t given the chance to wonder which omission Peter was talking about, as Peter released him only to trail a hand down his front, cupping his palm firmly against Jon’s crotch. Laughing when Jon recoiled away but allowing him to go all the same. 

“Do you mind?” Jon snapped.

“Not really,” Peter answered. “You know, you’re quite twitchy for an Archivist.”

“Speaking from your vast experience again, I presume.” 

“Something like that, yes.” Jon watched Peter close the distance between them again. “But, I’m sure you’ll get the hang out of it.”

“Yes, I’m sure archiving the stories of the over-imaginative and neurotic will make me much more receptive to being groped in someone’s storage closet.”

“Is that really what you think of them?” Peter asked him, bypassing the snark and sarcasm Jon tended unfortunately towards. “The stories, I mean. Your little collection.”

“I- Most of them can’t possibly be true,” Jon said. It wasn’t a lie. 

“Sure. Most of them, maybe. But that still leaves some, right?”

“Obviously.” 

“So. Which ones do you believe, then? How do you decide?”

Questions Jon had been asking himself, as well. He wasn’t sure he had any answers – at least, any that didn’t sound absolutely frivolous. Something inside him balked at telling Peter Lukas he was performing part of his job off of gut feeling alone. It didn’t seem to matter anyway, with Peter grinning at him. Placing a hand on his arm. 

“You believed the ones about me,” Peter said. Decidedly not a question and he sounded certain enough about it, even as Jon quietly scoffed. 

“I’d believe them more if I could see some proof for myself.” 

“Yes, that does sound about right.” Peter’s hand trailed from Jon’s arm, to his shoulder. Dragging a trail of chill inwards until Jon was tensing against the urge to flinch at his cool fingers upon his neck. Peter’s hand around until the back of Jon’s neck was cupped neatly against his palm. “I’d be happy to show you, Jon. Who knows? You might end up liking it out there.” 

“I don’t particularly consider myself much of a sailor,” Jon said. 

“No one does,” Peter told him lightly, “Until they are, at least. And that’s not what I’m talking about.” 

“Then what are you talking about?” The world would end before Peter told him something without dancing around it first. 

“My work. Plenty of quiet. Gives one ample amounts of time to think, which I’m inclined to believe you’d appreciate.” 

“Plenty of time alone,” Jon countered. A statement which seemed to please Peter immensely. “Like hosting a party with no guests?” 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Peter said, thick with amusement. 

“Right.” There was a moment of things clicking into place. “Your- family function. It’s here, isn’t it?” 

“Just outside these doors,” Peter told him. 

“Is this some sort of- of joke-”

“Not at all. We have gatherings fairly frequently – as I said, family first.” 

“There was no one here-”

“You must have missed them,” Peter said. “Which, honestly, is the best you could hope for. They aren’t always the easiest to get on with.” 

“Tell me what’s going on,” Jon snapped, abruptly tired of these games, of constantly being shoved and goaded towards defensiveness. Shrugging and twisting until Peter’s hand was bucked from its place around his neck. 

“So demanding,” Peter murmured. He pushed himself closer while Jon gripped the edge of the shelf he was trapped against, knuckles gone white with tension. “What if I had some demands of my own?” 

“What do you want?” The question was spat out with a ferocity that Jon hadn’t exactly intended. It felt a bit like getting knocked in the jaw, as if his teeth had snapped together strangely and jarred everything slightly out of place. 

“Right now I’d like to fuck you,” Peter told him. “Get you wet with the nasty remains of some long dead creature, just to see if you’d let me, and fuck you right against the shelving here. I want to walk the Archivist out through my family with my come dribbling down his thigh, bruised from my teeth around his throat. I’d parade you out naked if I could.” 

“Good lord,” Jon breathed, because honestly, what did one say to something like that? 

His heart was racing – probably with incredulity, with the rush of hearing something so absurdly outrageous. A part of him was convinced Peter had only said it to stir up this very reaction. Another part of him was busy picturing exactly how it might play out, imagined those empty halls filled with people and their eyes, gazes snapped to him, Peter’s hand a charged weight on the small of his back, Peter’s come a slick smear between his legs-

“Impeccable timing,” Peter said, a grimace on his face. “You don’t play fair.” 

“I-I’m not-”

“It wasn’t a criticism, I assure you.” Like he was proving a point Peter grabbed Jon’s hand by the wrist, pulled it so his palm was flush to the hard length of Peter’s cock through his slacks. “I don’t suppose you’d be amenable?” 

“Amenable?” Jon repeated. His mind strangely blank, outright refusing to reach the obvious conclusion even as his fingers moved with mindless intent, feeling out the shape of Peter’s flushed arousal. Everything snapped into place a moment later, Jon snatching his hand back as if he’d been burned. Or as if he’d just realized he’d been groping another man’s crotch. “No, gods above, you- you have _company_.” 

“Exactly why this issue of mine needs to be put away, don’t you think?” 

“I can think of something that needs bloody well put away,” Jon griped, watching as Peter did the exact opposite, undoing his belt and slacks. Rooted very firmly in memories of- something quite similar. Watching Peter. 

“My house, Archivist,” Peter told him. Jon rolled his eyes. “I can have my prick out-”

“You’ve made your point, thank you.” 

“In any room of this building,” Peter finished undaunted, “At any time I please.”

“Yes, you’re very impressive.”

“I am, though I’m sure you’ve noticed before now.” Peter was stroking himself languidly, an almost idle motion. “Will you really not let me fuck you?” 

“I don’t see any reason why I would,” Jon said, even as he turned the prospect over in his mind again. “And definitely not through the use of any of- of that.” 

The specimens. Which certainly weren’t watching them. But which if were would certainly be doing so with disapproval. His was gifted with a truly unpleasant imagining of Peter using that glowing moss to work his cock inside him. 

“A pity,” Peter sighed. Sounding the most sincere Jon thought he’d ever heard him. “Elias would have gone in for it.”

“Elias?” Jon asked sharply. “What do you mean he would have-”

“Oh, you know what I mean. But that’s another topic I think he’d mind us discussing behind his back. Gossipy lot that you are.” 

Elias. Peter and Elias had- Well, there was no point in speculating. No point in blindly trusting everything Peter said, either, and there was no accounting for the heavy twisting of his stomach at the thought of the two of them in here, together, of Elias propped up on a water warped tabletop with Peter between his thighs. 

“He gets quite eager for it, you know,” Peter said. An air of casual disregard for who he was talking about, for what he was talking about. For the tension Jon could feel tightening his shoulders and constricting his throat, that he had no doubts he was failing to disguise. “For all the haughty airs he likes to put on, he goes to his knees easy enough for me.” 

Peter was still palming himself, working himself with his hand. Not quite so vigorously as Jon remembered. Lacking the proper technique, or incentive perhaps, teasing more than building towards any completion. His free hand tangled in Jon’s hair and tugged, the action jolting Jon from his staring. 

“I seem to remember you going fairly easily, too,” Peter continued. There was a little jerk of his hips, then, as if at the memory of it. 

“I was…” Jon struggled for a moment, unsure what had even prompted him to go along with Peter’s whims, except, “I wanted to see you.” 

Peter laughed, low in his throat, and gave another short tug to Jon’s hair. “I’m not surprised. I told you you’d like it, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t say I liked it.” 

“No? You’ll have to excuse my assumptions, then.” His fingers pet against Jon’s scalp, nails turned to scratch gently until Jon shivered. “I think I’ve been very good to you, Jon. Wouldn’t you like to be good for me now?” 

The words inspired a familiar frisson along his spine. Tremoring through his joints and soft tissues, like his body wanted to buckle itself for him. His mind racing instead, caught and snared between two extremes, the urge to buck and deny, to caustically defend himself against some looming, unknown threat. The urge to- not. 

Peter brought his other hand to Jon’s face, too – a grimace, because he’d just had it wrapped around his cock – thumbed at Jon’s mouth and smeared a thin veneer of bitter precome across his lips. 

“Come on,” Peter murmured, and he was tilting Jon’s head, leaning in close until his mouth was slotted against Jon’s own. “Let me show you how.” 

How to what? Jon wanted to ask, but instead he was being kissed, and when his mouth parted he was being devoured, this aspect of Peter like every other, intrusive and unyielding and utterly demanding of Jon’s attention. Peter’s grip on him was tight, crooking his neck into a strained arch. Peter pressed their bodies flush, ignoring the thump of Jon’s back into the shelving, ignoring the way Jon’s hands found their way to his shirt and clenched and twisted in the material there. 

They broke apart to breathe and Peter held him. A moment of shuddering lungs and forced stillness before another dip, then, wherein Peter bit his mouth open and Jon’s blood spilled oily between them-

His blood wasn’t oily. It was copper, it was red, it was human, Jon could see it licked away by Peter’s tongue when they separated again. Peter’s grip on him changed and Jon found himself yielding to it finally, dropping down to his knees where Peter seemed to enjoy him most, lined up to take his cock that had been rubbing into his pelvis, that had no doubt left stains across his clothing from their close proximity. 

“Have you ever sucked a cock before, Archivist?” Peter asked him, holding him in place with one hand, holding his dick steady with the other.

“What do you think?” Jon sneered. There was a tense little ball of unease souring his stomach. A wellspring of bitter memories poisoning his bedrock.

Because, of course he had. Knelt before someone with their genitals in his mouth, wondering what was wrong with him that it never- it never went how it was meant to go.

Peter took a long, indulgent inhalation, like there was something particularly appealing in the air. He pet his hand along the side of Jon’s face before slipping it around the back of his neck. His fingers simply stroked there for a moment before they dug cruelly into the muscles, pinching hard enough to spark a wince and an automatic hunching of Jon’s shoulders. 

“No falling back on bad habits,” Peter said. He loosened his grip – it left Jon’s neck dully throbbing – so he could thread his fingers through Jon’s hair again and tug, and somehow the mix of stimulus dragged a noise from Jon’s throat. “That’s it. I told you I would show you how, remember? Nothing to be so nervous about.” 

“I am not-”

Another sharp twisting of Peter’s hand. “Shush.” As if Jon were a child. “I don’t particularly care if you want to lie to yourself, but at least show the courtesy of sparing me.” 

Jon snapped his mouth shut. Peter pulled at the fistful of his hair until Jon was forced to tilt his head back and bare his throat. To gaze up past the bulk of Peter’s cock and Peter’s body to where he was watching him, a disarmingly benign smile gracing his features.

“Look at you,” Peter soothed, “Right where you belong, aren’t you? Ah, don’t respond to that, please, but do get your mouth open for me.” 

Well, if there were anything more likely to make Jon want to do the exact opposite. All the same, he felt a brief pulse of heat – mortification, perhaps, or something like it – twist along his insides. It sharpened incrementally when he opened his mouth and Peter’s fingers tightened for just a moment before they relaxed and simply carded through the strands of his hair. 

“Perfect,” Peter said. Jon had the sudden urge to swallow, quenched as the head of Peter’s cock brushed against his lips and then pressed into his mouth. “That’s it.” 

He closed his lips carefully around the thick, heavy weight of Peter’s cock, pushing his tongue up against the intrusion of it. This, at least, he could enjoy, even if his feelings were more clinical than he suspected they were meant to be. Jon stroked his tongue across Peter’s cock slowly, rubbing against the underside of it and watching how Peter’s chest stilled for just a moment at a particular twist. Before repeating the motion, again, more forcefully, the flesh smooth and silky and hot in his mouth. 

“Just a natural born little cocksucker,” Peter murmured, and it made Jon scowl, shook something loose inside him. “Or is it all practice? What do you researchers get up to in your investigations, I wonder.” 

Jon made a noise of annoyance in his throat – disparaging him was one thing, but the Institute and its other staff hardly deserved Peter’s scorn. It was difficult to hold onto that thought as Peter seemed to take the sound as an invitation to slide his cock in just that bit deeper, abruptly filling Jon’s mouth and holding himself there. 

“Come on, like you mean it, darling.” Coupled with Peter tugging on his hair again, encouraging Jon to push himself forward, take more of Peter’s cock on his own. “Put that mouth of yours to use.” 

An implicit challenge that Jon couldn’t stop himself from wanting to rise to. He bent himself to his task, hands resting on Peter’s thighs. Sinking as low onto his cock as he could manage without discomfort and drawing back until the thick, flared head of it threatened to pop free from his lips. Laving his tongue against it, a rush of satisfaction at the bitter wetness he found there and the strain of Peter’s muscle beneath his fingers.

It was easy to get lost in the act once Jon had been yanked out of his own head a bit (and that was easy, too, easier than normal in a way that Jon was not ready to admit had anything to do with Peter’s treatment of him). Cataloguing the various array of Peter’s reactions – a sharp, quiet gasp of air when his prick nudged the entrance of Jon’s throat, a jerking twitch of his hips when Jon suckled at the head of his cock and lapped single-mindedly at its glans – slipping his hands up higher to pet at smooth skin and downy hair, collecting little details about Peter Lukas he’d never quite imagined he would want to have. 

Details like how his cock would twitch when Jon slid it free from his mouth. How Peter liked the subtle implication of teeth across its flesh, as if he enjoyed the reminder of something sharp and biting being made to yield for him. He responded to nails in his skin, gave a shaky little groan at the press of Jon’s thumb to his perineum. Teasing rubbing that only threatened to lead anywhere else. 

Peter liked guiding Jon by his hair. He liked holding him still or pulling against the rhythm Jon was attempting to establish. He liked it when Jon struggled. Jon wasn’t sure what it said about him that he thought he liked it, too. 

“Not that this isn’t lovely,” Peter said, dragging Jon’s attention upwards. “But I very much would like to come in that pretty mouth of yours and this, I’m sorry to say, just isn’t going to cut it.” 

Somehow those words were like a surge of heat through Jon’s chest, his guts twisting unpleasantly, almost anxiously. 

“I’m sure you’re trying. I can see that you’re a voracious little beast when you’ve got something to work towards – Elias probably likes that about you. But I can’t imagine you’ve satisfied many partners with this abysmal showing.” 

Jon swallowed hard, insides clenched and turning on themselves, feeling ridiculously like he was- failing something, his ribs suddenly too tight to allow for proper breaths. Even the proof of Peter’s pleasure, the weight of his cock still filled and heavy on Jon’s tongue and the kick of his hips forward with the pull of his throat – even that wasn’t enough to offset Peter’s tone, his soft, scornful disapproval. 

“It’s a bit sad, Archivist. You’re practically gagging for it and I’m still going to have to get myself off with my own hand.” 

Jon shuddered, his face flushed hot. Enough that Peter took notice, brushed a thumb across his cheek. He had to close his eyes and take in an unsteady breath. Already picturing Peter yanking himself free of his mouth, pulling on his cock until he came across Jon’s face again. 

“That’s not what you want, is it?” Jon assumed it was rhetorical until Peter jostled him gently by his hair. He looked back up to him, shaking his head an infinitesimal degree. “No, I didn’t think so. I bet I’d have to pry your jaw open to get my cock back now, wouldn’t I?” 

Shame or something quite like it coiled tight and prickling from the inside of his throat down to his stomach. Jon couldn’t say why it was affecting him so much, his emotions rawer, running closer to the surface than usual. Something of it must have shown on his face as Peter shushed him gently, his free hand cupping Jon’s jaw. 

“It’s all right, Jon. Admittedly, you’ve been something of a disappointment so far, but, I did say I would show you how, remember?” 

Peter’s cock was leaking steady into his mouth, a slick and bitter counterpoint to his words. That was, apparently, all the warning Jon was going to get, as Peter tugged him forward past any point Jon had stopped on his own, pausing but not pulling back when Jon’s throat began to rebel. 

“Are you done already? But I still have so much more to give you.” Peter’s hand was still snared at the nape of his neck but his second joined to pet at the front of Jon’s throat. “Be good and swallow for me, won’t you?” 

It was- difficult, for some reason. His jaw wanted to snap shut out of force of habit, and tears were beginning to burn and needle in his eyes from sheer physical discomfort alone. There was a flood of saliva in his mouth when Peter tilted his hips forward another degree or so, threatening to literally gag him. The sound of Jon struggling with his muscle memory was disgustingly loud, the wet noise his tongue made sliding against smooth flesh and the lurid clench of his own open throat, and Peter just kept feeding him more of his cock. 

“Come on, figure it out,” Peter chided. “If you decide to lose your lunch all over my floors you’ll have to clean it up with your tongue.” 

Jon groaned at the thought, because it was repulsive. Humiliating. To think of himself licking at the floor before Peter’s boots, debasing himself like that. Because Peter told him to. Because Peter wanted him to. Because Peter might shudder at the sight just like he was doing now, driving his cock down Jon’s throat with a sudden, aching stretch, a moment of strained resistance and then a smooth slide of flesh until Jon was pressed tight against Peter’s pelvis. 

“Perfect,” Peter sighed, a flood of heat through Jon’s insides. His hips pulled back, just enough that Jon felt his cock slip free of his throat before he fucked it right back in. “Very nice, Archivist, such a good little sheath for my cock.” 

Yielding to this had a very different quality than what had come before. Another rhythm to fall into – of Peter fucking his throat, harsh and unrelenting, Jon swallowing desperately around his mouthful of cock whenever he tried to gag and choke. Any control of the situation thoroughly ceded, with Peter twisting his fist in his hair and pulling Jon down his length, turning his head this way and that, as if Jon only existed for the heat of his mouth and the tight clench of his throat. 

A feeling reinforced by Peter’s commentary, a litany of degradation and praise that had Jon’s head swimming, unable to untangle any of his emotions from one another. Mortification and pleasure alike fitted together like wooden joints, so perfectly carved for one another that their seams vanished. Peter’s voice coming shallower, breathier, the snap of his hips less controlled. 

It was a rather unwanted jolt to awareness when Peter suddenly shifted a leg forward, between Jon’s knees. Kicking them apart and drawing back until only the slick head of cock remained on Jon’s tongue.

“Well, I have say, I was expecting something more reciprocative on your end.” Highlighted by an unkind tap of the toe of Peter’s boot into his sac just harsh enough to steal the breath Jon had managed to gather. “All that panting and whining you’ve been doing, I would have bet on you having made a mess of yourself by now.” 

A more familiar kind of shame flushed through him, visceral and stabbing. Much less pleasant than any that Peter had implemented before, and Jon would have jerked himself away if not for the hand shifted to hold him still by the scruff of his neck. 

“I won’t have it said that I’m anything other than a generous partner,” Peter told him. “Go on, you know yourself best – get yourself going for me.” 

That was- not what he had expected to hear. It struck him dumb for a moment, staring up at Peter until he was wrenched uncomfortably by the grip Peter had on him. 

“Get to it, Jon. Give us a nice show.” 

Jon shuddered, the electric sensation of eyes on him sharpening unexpectedly. He tried to quash the clamber of his thoughts – that this was ridiculous, insulting – as he unsteadily fumbled with his trousers, still breathing heavily around the head of Peter’s prick as he pulled out his own. Ashamed again at the feeling of his flesh soft and almost flaccid in his palm, unresponsive to-

“I really don’t have all day. There’s a party I need to get to, remember? Unless you’d like to spend the rest of your evening milking my cock – let my guests see how desperate the Archivist can get.” 

Maybe not entirely unresponsive. Jon shut his eyes, concentrated on working his hand against his cock, coaxing himself fully hard. Acutely aware of the slow flush of his blood. How clumsy and awkward his touch felt, the slight discomfort of his too-dry hand. 

Peter pushed his cock deep into his mouth, a pause when Jon convulsed in shock around it and then he’d punched it down his throat, giving a few short, bucking thrusts before he yanked himself free again.

“Stroke my cock, Jon,” he ordered. Stern, but smiling when Jon glanced up to him. “You’ve seen how it’s done, right? How I like it?” 

“Y-” Jon had to clear his throat, his voice ragged and stripped and no less sarcastic for it. “Yes. I think I have a- a general idea on how to-”

“Haven’t had your mouth empty for a minute and you’re being a little prick.” Jon huffed, wrapping his hand around Peter’s cock. Trying not to think about how it was slicked up with his own saliva. Trying not to think that Peter’s hand petting through his hair felt fond, somehow. “And if your display just now was meant to be a demonstration, then I’m honestly not sure you do have a general idea on how to pull someone off.” 

“Not all of us are so innately comfortable with pleasuring ourselves in front of company.” 

Apparently, he was more comfortable touching Peter than himself. Mimicking what he remembered of Peter’s movements in his office, the twist of his wrist around the head, his fingers a circle beneath its flare. Tightening or laxing his hand according to the tension of Peter’s body. Speeding up when Peter’s breath began to come in short, fitful bursts. 

Peter pushed his hand off, and Jon was gratified to watch him squeeze his fist harshly around his length, as if Jon had dragged him so close to completion. 

“It’s nice to know you were paying attention,” Peter commented. Still with a breathless quality to his voice. “Now, do that to yourself.” 

“Peter…” 

“I wasn’t offering you a choice in the matter.” His tone was soothing, as was the hand stroking over Jon’s hair. The drag of his nails at his scalp. Less so was the way he kicked Jon’s legs further apart. “I want you to make yourself squirm and writhe around on the floor like a desperate whore. For me – it can be our little secret, if you like.” 

Jon made a strangled sound in his throat. He was badly tempted to resist, equally as tempted to yield, and it felt like it wasn’t a decision so much as a worn-down inevitability when he palmed himself again. Spreading his legs wide, and wider at Peter’s insistence, feeling something more cloying than the usual flicks of arousal he could inspire in himself stirring through his gut. 

Peter watched him. Fisting his cock the same way Jon was fisting his own, less fervent and involved and more an idle soothing motion. Jon’s hand was slick with his own saliva now. Traces of precome that he’d gathered up on his fingers while working over Peter’s cock, now smearing across his flesh. It was all- strange. He was struck with the desperate urge to turn towards the door, to check behind himself and make sure there weren’t uninvited eyes taking in the scene he presented. 

There was something thrilling, too, about that. Something else Watching him, Watching them, drinking in the display Jon could offer with his body. His hips were bucking upwards, meeting his palm on every downward stroke, his abdomen tight and clenching and heat thrumming along the lines of his body, welling steadily in his groin, in the kicking jerk of his cock in the sheath of his hand. 

“Ask me to come in your mouth,” Peter said, pushed out between his own heaved breaths. 

“Please,” Jon replied, beyond most realms of reason. “Please, Peter.” 

“Fuck.” Pained, like it was pulled out of him, with Peter dragging Jon close to where he was frantically jerking himself. “You’ll have to- Please what, Archivist?” 

“Please come in my mouth.” 

Choked off a bit at the end, as Peter shoved the head of his cock in and in a few more furious flicks of his wrist was spilling onto Jon’s tongue in thick spurts, hot and bitter, nearly astringent, flooding Jon’s mouth. 

“Don’t swallow,” Peter demanded. Jon made a sound of annoyance – a feat, when he felt desperate with the need to orgasm, with Peter’s come still being milked into his mouth. “I want you to come all over yourself with my seed in your mouth.” 

If he was attempting to goad Jon into hurrying up it certainly worked. Jon fucked into his own hand, breathing raggedly through his nose and trying to ignore how awkward it felt to just- hold Peter’s come in his mouth, to clench his lips shut tight when Peter withdrew and wiped the head of his dick against them. Against his cheek. 

He almost managed to finish with some dignity intact. But Peter tapped his boot against Jon’s balls again at just the right moment to make his orgasm catch him by surprise, the burst of static laced pain-pleasure making him moan, the cords of tension inside him suddenly yanked taut and snapped, his cock pulsing. Moan, and spill Peter’s come out over his lower lip before he could catch himself.

“Oh, very nicely done!” Peter said, lavish with praise. 

Jon grimaced, licking at his lips in automatic reflex before he remembered exactly what he was doing. His limbs were shivery, everything feeling just slightly displaced as his body slowly unwound. 

“Such a lovely sight,” Peter sighed. Clearly enjoying his aftermath. “It really is a good look for you, Archivist. You should wear it more often.” 

“Yes, I’m aware, you seem quite partial to covering me in your- bodily fluids,” Jon complained. Moving his mouth as little as possible. 

“You can say come, Jon. You already asked me for it.” 

He glared sourly at the man and refused to say anything else at all. His right hand was covered in strings of his own ejaculate – to say nothing of what had escaped him, and even less than that of what was threatening to drip off of his chin. He prodded delicately at the mess with the fingers of his left hand, wanting badly to wipe it away. 

“Here,” Peter interrupted his waspishly silent misery. And produced a kerchief from some pocket or another, offering it out to Jon. “Seems the least I can do, under the circumstances.” 

“The circumstances of this being a mess entirely of your own making?” Jon asked. He took the cloth all the same, scrubbing at his mouth. Intrusive and unwelcome, he was hit with the sudden thought that he’d… imbibed the rest of what he’d managed to keep between his lips. The taste of it lingered high in the back of his throat. 

“Entirely my own? I hardly think that’s fair when you were the one on your knees, begging for me to spill in your mouth.” 

“I was not begging- You were the one who wanted me to-”

“The circumstances I was referring to were wholly altruistic. Protecting your virtue, such as it is.” Jon chewed at the inside of his cheek like he could bite back any withering retorts about the state of his _virtue_. “You do have to walk back out through my guests, and I thought it a safe assumption, that you’d rather they not know precisely what you’ve been getting into.” 

“The world hardly deserves your benevolence,” Jon muttered. Cleaning off his fingers and palm, now, the rag saturated almost to the point of uselessness. 

“You, as a certainty, do not. It’s a kindness utterly unearned that you’re sticking your nose up at.” 

Jon couldn’t contain a little snort of amusement at that. They lapsed into a silence that was nearly companionable, focused on righting their clothing and straightening themselves. Peter shook his head in mute refusal when Jon offered him back his kerchief – Jon dropped it on a counter and hoped someone with a thick set of gloves would retrieve it.

Jon rather suspected their… diversion was going to be all too obvious. He’d never- He wasn’t one for slipping away for activities such as this, for having to correct himself and face normal civilization so quickly. And now he’d done so twice, courtesy of Peter Lukas’ attentions. 

Peter helped him to his feet. His hand clamped onto Jon’s shoulder, sweeping over him with an unfamiliarly critical eye, brushing off his slacks and shirt here, adjusting the lay of his waistcoat. Stroking his hair back into some semblance of order. Jon held himself stock-still and rigid, hands plastered to the sides of his thighs. 

There wasn’t anything to improve on Peter, of course. He’d reassembled himself easily, and something new panged in Jon’s chest when he considered that Peter was probably experienced at this sort of thing. There was still a small curl of his hair come undone from sweat and exertion, just at his temple. Jon ignored Peter’s crooked eyebrow when he reached forward and swept it back for him. 

Peter captured his hand before he could draw it fully back. “Is that all it takes?” 

“I- Pardon?” 

“An orgasm or two and you’re soft as a kitten for me.” 

“You’re intolerable,” Jon snapped, jerking his hand free and then bodily shoving his way out of the all-too-personal configuration they’d been arranged in. “And it wasn’t an orgasm _or two_ , as I recall, you were the only one to-”

“I did say I wanted to rectify that situation.” 

“Well, I suppose until then you’ll just have to suffer through the indignities of being the one indebted for once.” 

“Oh? Do I owe you now, Archivist?” Peter, of course – predictably – seemed delighted at the prospect. 

“If you’re going to keep ledgers I might as well make sure they’re accurate.” Yes, Jonathan Sims had sunk to Peter’s level. Had probably done so some time ago. 

“Do let me know if you think of some way to balance it all out again,” Peter said. Salaciously, and back at Jon’s side, a hand at the small of his back just like Jon had imagined, goading him forward towards the door. 

He could just barely hear the quiet clatter of cutlery on china. The low murmur of voices. All things that had been notably absent earlier. He wondered if he could convince Peter to let him stay. If he could convince any of the Lukas family to tell him- something, anything about what they were. 

“I take it this is my cue to go?” Jon wagered. 

“Absolutely,” Peter agreed, impervious to the scowl Jon aimed his way. “Don’t be sullen, darling, but I already brought my plus-one for the evening.” 

“They must be heartbroken,” Jon said. 

“I don’t doubt he found a way to entertain himself in my absence.” 

The light of the corridor was shockingly bright after spending so long sequestered in the dark room. Jon winced momentarily but didn’t want to give Peter any further satisfaction by appearing to hesitate. The back hall the specimen room sprouted off from was out of the way enough that no one greeted them as they exited – Peter luxuriating and at ease, Jon more furtive and twitchy. 

The sounds of people were unmistakable now, the muffled din of a gathering making its way back to them. Growing louder as Peter steered him forward. A servant cast the two of them a glance but then hurried on her way past them, empty carafe cradled in her hands. Jon found himself coming to a halt at the intersection of the main corridor, an unfortunate twisting in his stomach. 

“Since you’ve made yourself so familiar, I trust you can find the exit on your own?” Peter asked. Suggested, really, with a loose hand clapped to Jon’s shoulder. 

“I-” It shouldn’t- It didn’t bother him. Being dismissed so summarily. The removal of Peter’s interest as abrupt as its introduction. Peter was already beginning to peer around him, through an open arch to a lounge where men and women were carefully arranged, stern-looking and stiff-limbed. “Of course.” 

There was an irritating measure to Peter’s gaze when it skipped back to him. Satisfied in some manner Jon couldn’t recognize. “Excellent, Jon.”

And that was- that was that, apparently. Peter strolled back among his guests without an otherwise spare glance. Leaving Jon standing in the hall, bereft. Feeling distinctly out of place, in this house, among these people – the kind that had never deigned to rub elbows with the likes of he or his grandmother. A few of them turned to regard him and he bristled at the unwelcome reminder. 

Well and so, it wasn’t as though being something of an outsider was in any way unusual for Jon. It wasn’t as though he _wanted_ to be a part of- of any of this. 

He didn’t run for the foyer, but only barely, walking at a brisk, clipped pace. Acutely aware of his dishevelment, despite Peter’s best attempts. Gods, acutely aware that he could still _taste_ Peter in his mouth, the sense-memory still strong enough to conjure up the feel of Peter’s cockhead lodging into his throat, the wetly ragged sound of his cough around it-

“Jon.” 

He started, jerked of his thoughts, to palms against his chest – the only thing that had kept him from running, achingly literally, into Elias Bouchard. 

“Oh, for the love of-” Jon snapped his mouth shut. Even when he was popping up at the least convenient and most unwanted moment, Elias was still his superior. “Elias.” 

Elias had one eyebrow sharply raised, but there was the barest hint of a smile at his lips. “Yes, I’m surprised to see you here as well.” That smile turned into a scrying sort of thing, and Elias brushed distractedly at the material of Jon’s lapel. “You must have made quite the impression, working for the Lukases.” 

If it was possible to die of shame, Jon supposed he was soon to find out. “I- I wasn’t invited.” That made the whole situation worse, somehow, Elias watching him with polite interest. “To the party. Obviously.” 

“Oh?” There was a pause then, made of grating things, angled edges grinding inside him and winding him tighter. Elias took pity on him after a time. “Nonetheless, our esteemed host appeared pleased enough with you.”

“You, ah, you saw that?” Even Jon wasn’t sure which moment, exactly, he was referring to. There was the sharp feeling of eyes scouring his body, even as Elias looked as calm and placid as ever. 

“In the hall, yes,” Elias said. Jon felt a miniscule amount of his tension drain. “The two of you must be on quite familiar terms.” 

Drained, and immediately became returned to his system. “In- In a manner of- manner of speaking, I suppose.” 

“Quite.” Elias must have wanted something with him. But he gave no indication of what that might be, and Jon found himself growing frustrated, wishing he could demand it from him, order it, _what do you know, what do you want –_

“I-I was just leaving,” Jon forced out. 

He felt like he was missing something, and Elias looked almost disappointed, or something, a small furrow between his brows. He felt like he should be taking advantage of this somehow, that there was some unspoken difference in the scales between them now, though what that difference might be Jon was at a loss to say. He felt like he should- push. He felt like he should run. He felt like he needed a bloody shower. 

Gods above, his back was killing him.

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” Elias said. He reached forward and stroked along Jon’s jaw, and Jon wanted badly to tell him not to touch him. “Try to enjoy the remainder of your evening, Jon. If you hadn’t had your fill enough so far.” 

Jon nodded jerkily, not trusting what he might actually say. What might come spewing forth from his mouth if he opened it. Elias gave him a dragging, once-over kind of glance that seemed to pick over every Jon’s flaw – visible and otherwise – and then inclined his head, wandering deeper into the house as Jon hurried towards the foyer. 

He’d never felt so relieved to be thrust into the dark, winding Yharnam streets alone. Though he hardly felt alone at all, pulling up the collar of his coat against the unshakeable impression of eyes weighted on his form.

 

 

 

“Come on, Sims,” Daisy snarled, words punched out in the space between one overwhelming attack and the next, “Fight back already!” 

“I-I thought that was-” Jon had to stop, flinging his body out of range of her weapon again, its teeth snagging on his shirt and flesh in a glancing blow. “I thought I was!” 

“You’re not fighting,” she ground out. “You’re running.” 

“Well, excuse me for-” Another pause, Jon scrambling and Daisy pursuing, and gods above, how the hell could she move so fast, string together so many attacks. “Excuse me for not wanting to be _eviscerated_ by-”

“You’ll never survive if you don’t fucking fight!”

Like the flourish at the end of a particularly bleak sentence she was suddenly in close, and Jon barely had enough time to bring his cane up to catch against her cleaver, the force of the blow jolting from the weapon down his arms in shuddering, seismic quavers, the weight of it enough to knock him down. 

She didn’t really need to step on his chest to prove the point that she’d won. 

“Get off me,” Jon snapped, shoving at her boot. He’d dropped his weapon at some point. Hands still numb, and the meat of his arms thoroughly shaken – it felt like his muscles had been sheared off their bones somehow. 

“If I was a beast, you’d be dead,” Daisy said. She swept her stray hairs away from her face, the fine down at the edges of her hairline plastered there with sweat. She, pointedly, did not move. 

She, perhaps more pointedly, dug the heel of her boot against his sternum.

“Yes, yes,” Jon gasped, swatting at her calf. “You’ve made it very clear, you’re a better hunter than I am. Do I need to say uncle?” 

She made a vague noise of disgust at his poorly timed sarcasm. Admittedly, most of his sarcasm was poorly timed, and Jon was knocked from his train of thought by the sudden pressure of Daisy bearing her weight down on him, just enough to kick his breath out of him before she pulled back. 

“Get up,” she told him, and then presented a helping hand, “Let’s try it again.” 

“Haven’t had enough of chasing me across the training yard?” Jon complained. 

“Never. Told you you were running.” 

Jon huffed out a sigh that sounded more long-suffering than he strictly felt. 

The courtyard they’d found for themselves was high above the civilians’ street levels. A sequestered enclave belonging to the Church in some form or another, a stonework landing that gave way to the dirt training ring Jon found himself lying on. Open to the air and the sky was beautiful – vast, vast, vast, va- – today, a bright blue that was usually tucked away between the towering buildings of the upper levels. The light from it, from the sun, ringed around Daisy’s silhouette like a corona, made her expression difficult to read. 

“Comfortable?” Well, there was nothing difficult to read about that. 

“Moreso than when you knock me around.” He grabbed her proffered hand, groaning at the protest of his muscles as they both worked to haul him upright. How could so much of his body hurt at one time?

He hunched back over to retrieve his weapon. Well, ‘weapon.’ It was a cane, as if he didn’t feel enough like a dandy in his slacks and button up and rapidly-becoming-scuffed brogues, waistcoat and other amenities of normal societal wardrobe discarded at the door (and Daisy had given him flak enough for all of it, as if she’d given him any advice at all on what to wear, as if she’d figured he would traipse through all of Yharnam and its upper echelons in his bloody undergarments or something). 

Still, the cane was all he was getting for now, and he wasn’t quite ready to break it apart and learn how to- _whip_ something to death with it. He dutifully picked it up, hearing Daisy shift and stalk in the dirt the behind him. His hindbrain tried to ping at that, a reminder that there was a violent and dangerous person just over his shoulder, out of sight. But if Daisy was going to do more than bruise and superficially grate patches of his skin away, she’d have done so by now. Or so he reasoned. 

“It might be a more even contest if you gave me something with an actual edge to it,” Jon couldn’t help but to mutter as he turned to face her again. Pulse leaping at how near she’d come.

Daisy snorted. “It really wouldn’t.” 

“You don’t know that.” 

“You’re not even holding that thing right.” 

“Now you’re telling me I don’t know how to hold a _cane_ properly?” 

“You look like you’re about to take a stroll down Central Yharnam for noon tea.” 

“Yes, thank you, my outfit is hideous and completely unsuited for sparring, I know.” 

“Not just that. Stop holding it by the handle.” 

“And where, pray tell, would you have me hold it by then?” 

Daisy shook her head, impervious to his scorn and the no-doubt disdainful thing his face tended to do when he was getting irritated. At himself and Daisy both, though it was easier to deflect it outwards. And Daisy took it in stride. Almost seemed to prefer when he was loosened from the manners of decorum he felt obliged to cling to. 

“Here,” Daisy said, stabbing the end of her spear into the ground. She motioned for his cane and he handed it over willingly enough. Watched her flip it around in her palm until she was gripping the shaft of it just below its handle. “Now, just swing it.” 

And demonstrated. There was a surprising amount of grace in her form, liquid and flowing with movement. A reminder that she’d honed her body for this for- years, at least. If what he’d heard about hunters was true, she’d probably been training for the majority of her life. Surviving enough Nights as an active hunter to make a name of oneself didn’t allow much room for error. 

“You try,” she said. It jerked him out of his thoughts, which had wandered quite far from his original intent of actually watching what she was doing closely enough to replicate any of it.

“Uh,” Jon replied. Taking the cane back from her and readjusting his grip. “Right.” 

It felt unwieldy and awkward, for all that the weapon itself was oddly sophisticated. He swung it in a wide arc, tugged along by the momentum he created. His stance not firm enough for the way his weight shifted, threatening to overbalance from one side to another before he finally teetered back to center. 

“Unbelievable,” Daisy sighed.

“I’m here for you to teach me,” Jon snapped. 

“The best way to learn is to just do it.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” 

“Come with me on the next Hunt, you’ll be proficient in no time,” Daisy said. Jon glared at her, baleful, but she gave one of those indolent, rolling shrugs and jerked her weapon free of the ground one-handed. “No? Well, next best thing.” 

Her stance shifted, just slightly – familiar enough now to inspire a wave of gooseflesh across his skin, his hand slick with sweat where it clenched around the cane. 

“I’m not sure if you’re imagining yourself as the beast or the hunter,” Jon said. He tried to shift himself as well, mimicking the slouch and pull of her muscles. It probably wasn’t anywhere near as competent as he liked to imagine.

Daisy grinned at him. “Guess we’ll find out, right? You going to fight back this time?” 

“I was fighting back before-” 

Not that it mattered. Daisy launched herself at him before he could finish, and Jon resigned himself to another dozen rounds or so of being kicked around the ring.

 

 

 

Two loud, deliberate knocks on his front door interrupted the otherwise quiet solitude of Jon’s afternoon. Free time was rapidly becoming a precious commodity, between his work (still an unholy disorganized mess, and Jon was losing the thread of his original intent as it was, finding himself more and more intrigued by the slanted view of the world offered up by the statements), his own private research (into the Lukas family, which had ended as a total waste of time, now shifted to the subjects of mycology and bryology and any of their known notable properties), and his training sessions with Daisy (exhausting and painful). 

Jon had actually been enjoying his time off, indulging himself in a rare moment of peace. Tea and a novel that had been shoved to the back burner for far too long, a cataloguing of the various discrepancies certain authors had noted when compiling miscellaneous histories of Yharnam and the Church. He was heavily tempted to let whoever it was darkening his doorstep remain there, unanswered. 

Whoever it was seemed undaunted. Two more heavy knocks, less like the rapping of knuckles and more like some thick meat slapping against his doorstep. It helped, somehow – the staccato rhythm of it ( _knock, knock_ ) threatened to turn his stomach to frozen lead. The quality of it lessened that, to a degree. Harder to imagine it was a child knocking at the door to his death. 

One more set of knocking and Jon sighed angrily to his empty room. He shoved his text away from his body, sliding it across the surface of his dining table. Leaving it open – he’d no doubt return to it soon enough. And it wasn’t until he had gotten to his feet that he realized just how long he’d been sitting anyway. His joints crackled and popped, muscles still protesting from the overuse they’d yet to adjust to. 

Another bloody pair of fists into his door. Jon marched his way to the entrance hall, carpeted feet quiet over the hardwood and thin rugs. It didn’t occur to him to pause and peer through the windowed slats of the door until he was already half through opening it. Until after he’d noticed the bulk of the shadows silhouetted against them. 

“What do you want?” Jon demanded, trying to hide how he wanted to quail at the sight of- 

Of gods, what in the hell were they? Two figures stretched well beyond normal proportions, looming heavily over him. His head came to somewhere in their chests. They wore dark cloaks that revealed only the bottoms of their grinning faces, sleeves ending at their forearms like they’d quickly grown beyond all reasonable expectations. He could see their thick necks and patches of their chests, covered in a mess of uneven scars. Their hands were- there was something wrong with their hands, the way they curled and twitched in the air. How massive they were. 

“Got a delivery here,” one of them ground out. The horror of its appearance was somehow only worsened by the inappropriateness of its thick accent.

“Special delivery,” the other one chimed in. 

“One Mister Jonathan Sims.” The first one. 

“The Archivist,” the second finished.

They both laughed, then, in uncomfortable unison, the sound thick with phlegm, rattling like sharp rocks rolled across each other in a wet cloth. The cloaks didn’t fully cover their legs, either. Jon chose this moment to notice that. 

They seemed to be waiting for him to reply. Their teeth looked… large. 

“Uh,” Jon began, intelligently. “Right. Yes, that’s- uh, that’s me.” 

“We know.” 

“We know the Archivist.” 

“Everyone knows the Archivist.” 

“Ain’t that the other way round?” 

Another mess of that disturbing laughter. It kept Jon rooted to the spot, his spine ramrod-straight with tension. His mind couldn’t seem to choose between the instinctive urge to flee or the urge to still under the gaze of a predator, oscillating wildly as his heart pumped at a rapid pace. 

“I-I’m not- I wasn’t expecting a, uh, a delivery,” he managed. He flinched back when one of them reached into its cloak, but it only pulled out signage for a- a delivery. Like any courier would have. 

The man, he supposed, held it out to him, and Jon took it wordlessly. There was a pen attached to the top, of the kind that held its ink inside itself, a novelty even in the city. He’d already picked it up, mindlessly signing his name as he scanned the information, stilled when he saw who the order had come from.

Peter. Peter Lukas. 

“Much obliged,” one of them said, plucking the papers and board from his hands. 

“Wait-” Jon attempted, but they were turning away, sloping with unnatural steps to the shipment carriage behind them. Outfitted with horses equal to their mass, that stomped and tore at the stone cobbles of the street. There was a lamp hung at the front, where the driver sat, and Jon took a moment to be thankful that they’d come in the daylight.

“Not how it works,” one of them told him. It was lugging a crate into his house.

“Wait, damnit, stop, I don’t want-”

The other was coming up, its own trunk scraping across the ground. “Not how it works.” 

“I don’t care _how it works_ -” Cut off now by its free hand shoving him back, throwing him bodily against his own door. It was a blow delivered carelessly enough, but it was still enough to make his chest feel crushed, to have agony rip through the things on his spine at the impact.

He sullenly watched the rest of the delivery from his stoop. Four trunks in total. He watched them, glowering. Watched the carriage, with its high sides and black doors. A thick burlap sack sagged outwards from the body of it when the last chest was pulled free. It looked bloody. He thought he saw it twitch.

There was a hand, heavy and wrong, on his shoulder before he could get closer. 

“Job’s finished,” the man said to him. The other one dragged itself out behind it. 

“Another service rendered.” 

“…Thank you?” Jon said. Hesitant, hoping that was what he needed to say to make them leave. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to return any of it to Peter Lukas?” 

“Our pleasure,” one of them said. 

“Not how it works,” the other replied. 

“We take what needs taken.” 

“You take what needs taken.” 

“Everybody’s happy.” 

Freshly grated laughter, and Jon glumly accepted that the two of them, at least, seemed to be happy. He waited on his doorstep until they’d both piled themselves into the front of their carriage. He watched one of them toss the bag deeper into storage, and throw the doors closed behind it. 

He waited until they’d snapped their reins and driven their carriage forward. Until the clattering stamp of their horses’ hooves faded, and the rattling of their wheels couldn’t be heard. Just for good measure, he waited until a bit after that, too, before turning and heading inside. 

_For Archival improvement_ , Peter Lukas’ handwriting had read on the shipping notice. The couriers had left all four the trunks in his sitting room. Their steps, the drag of their crates, had disrupted and rolled the rugs unevenly. Jon kicked them more fully out of his way. 

Did he really want to know what Peter thought would improve the Archives? He should simply go down to his house and demand Peter take them back unopened. Pay for a second round of their shipment. That was, of course, assuming he could find Peter anywhere. 

Staring at the boxes wasn’t going to uncrate them any faster. He wasn’t going to develop the ability to see through wood any time soon, either. He could leave them there, right where they’d been left. If there were some way to communicate this obstinance Jon would be more tempted. But as it stood at the moment the only person he was denying was himself, unwilling to slake his curiosity just because he wanted to spite Peter Lukas in some manner. 

And he could always claim he hadn’t opened them, anyway. It was with no small amount of dread souring his stomach that Jon knelt down before one of the trunks. Even taken by itself as a storage unit, it was of fine craftsmanship. Thick wood stained dark and reddish, decorated with carven designs and a metal clasp on its front that flipped easily open on well-oiled hinges. It was annoying. The lid of the trunk opened just as easily, revealing its nefarious contents.

Of clothing. Jon paused, pulling out a shirt. As well made as the trunk, or better – of a much higher quality than his own, for a certainty, he could feel that much simply lifting it free, holding it between his hands. The rest of the trunks were similarly outfitted, slacks and coats and shirts, waistcoats – one of them held a smaller contained filled with miscellaneous accoutrements and accessories, as if Jon’s _timepiece_ was so desperately in need of replacement. 

He slammed all the lids shut with more force than was necessary. It was insulting. What the hell was Peter even thinking, sending him this? He determined then and there not to touch any of it until he was seeing the trunks dragged back out of his house.

 

 

 

The servants greeted Jon at the door when he knocked this time, and politely informed him that Mr. Lukas was unavailable. They politely refused his request to wait for Peter in one of the drawing rooms. They politely denied any knowledge of when Peter might next be available.

They, politely, closed the door in his face while he was still trying to bargain with them. Unbelievable.

 

 

 

One of the chests had had leathers in, Jon mused rather vacantly. He was standing in his undergarments, trying to determine what would be more appropriate for sparring with Daisy in. Leathers of the kind hunters tended to employ. Leathers of a similar nature to what he’d seen Daisy herself in, though the set Lukas had purchased for him was darker than her own, a stark contrast to the soft-looking tans he couldn’t imagine her without. 

He frowned, and yanked his drawers open. He was not going to use anything Peter had _purchased_ for him.

 

 

 

It was just out of convenience, he told himself. Since Daisy had taken it upon herself to systematically ruin every shirt in his possession. And he simply hadn’t had the time to get any of them mended. And he had a trunk full of perfectly decent shirts taking up space in his sitting room (he suspected it would be more of an issue if he ever had guests or visitors to his residence, but as it was they sat where they had been left, and Jon navigated his routines around them). 

It was one shirt. No one would notice its absence. Things do get lost in transit. 

It was disturbingly well-tailored to his measurements. 

 

 

 

Jon didn’t avoid the Cathedral district, necessarily. He’d just slowly found himself with fewer and fewer reasons to visit as time had gone by. He’d stopped attending the Healing Church’s sermons around or perhaps a bit after the point in his childhood when he’d stopped accepting blood transfusions. A few years after _that_ business (with the book, with the knocking, with the spider), when he’d made up his mind to pursue tutelage at the Magnus Institute. There was a certain threshold of borrowed blood one couldn’t go beyond for acceptance into the Institute – though it was unclear how that threshold was determined – but nevertheless Jon was young, and stubborn, and not even his grandmother’s disapproval could shake him from his determination. 

Besides, he was sure by that point in his life, he’d gotten used to her disapproval. The quiet baseline disinterest she held in his life, except for when he was pursuing things that brought trouble straight to her doorstep. Taking a stance _against_ the Church that had once purged the city of disease and literally cured the wounded and impaired was one such manner of trouble. He wasn’t sure if she’d ever believed he was doing it out of anything other than slightly premature adolescent mutiny. His innately contrarian disposition at work. 

Jon didn’t actually give much thought to the Church or its workings, except for how they intersected occasionally with his own interests. Its scholars and Choir and prospectors, digging into the unknown and generally refusing to share their work. It wasn’t out of opinion or great mistrust that he didn’t come to the Cathedral square – he’d just become disconnected with any reason to do so. 

And now he’d become connected with one reason to do so, quite frequently – Daisy. She was a hunter of the Church, even employed as she was by the Magnus Institute. He wasn’t sure how any of that worked out, and never got more than vague grunting when he tried to press Daisy on the topic. But the training areas and weapons she had access to were all, technically, the Church’s properties, and so he ended up crossing the square more and more frequently. 

He’d almost forgotten how densely populated parts of the city could be. There must have been an event of some kind or another today, as the bustle of people to and fro was increased to the point that even dripping with sweat and stained in places with blood and dirt, strangers still managed to bump against him on his long walk back to his apartments. 

Jon took the backways, preferring the dullness of Oedon Chapel to the bustle of the streets. It sent him through the graveyard but spared him the grand thoroughfare that drew most people. The chapel itself smelled always of incense, the numerous stored jars and urns of it throwing the scent into the air even when it wasn’t being burned. Its usual quiet and solitude was disrupted today, and Jon had to sigh as he trudged along within an indistinct crowd, thoughts on all the techniques he still had to master and the hot bath he was going to draw himself once he’d reached home.

It was really only happenstance that he looked to the side when he did, and spied a man, standing apart from the crowd. Out among the graves, and Jon’s first thought was that he must be paying respects to someone. But the man wasn’t looking down. He was staring, blankly, upwards. Swaying gently on his feet, lightly, as if the mass of his body wasn’t all there anymore.

Jon stopped, ignoring the elbows he earned as people huffed their way past him. The man wasn’t doing anything. Just swaying. Just staring. Jon stepped forward. The man continued swaying. Slowly, Jon turned his head, following the general direction of the man’s gaze. 

And there, perched upon the side of the chapel was-

Was-

There was something huge perched on the side of the chapel, like some hideous insect, its long limbs spindled and black and bristled, bent in unnatural angles as it clutched at the sloped roof and spire of the church with hands grotesquely elongated and malformed. Thin torso or- or carapace, it looked like a starved thing, the nobs of a vertebrate and ribcage pressed up close to its flesh, and the only bulbous part of it was its _head_ , an oval mass of latticed black skin and hair, and within each recession an eye, all of them twitching and writhing and ticking in separate directions, bulging outwards as if filled with air or fluid and then sinking back into its depths, all of them disorganized, and horrific, yellowed with jaundice and even from this distance he could see how some of their pupils were torn and some were pinpricked, and some were milky and clouded with blindness. 

He could do nothing but stare at it. This horrible thing, with its limbs like spiders’ legs, nested on the side of the building and waiting for- waiting for what? He wondered if he was swaying, like the man, but no, he felt on solid ground still, and when he looked the man was stumbling himself forward, as if in a haze or a daydream. 

Jon wanted to stop him. Instead he watched the man take dreamy steps towards the thing. He wanted to call for help, but his throat was closed tight against the terror thrashing wild and sick in his stomach. He saw the thing on the chapel detach one fetid hand from its perch, and like its bulk made it move in slow-motion, he watched it reached towards the man. 

Its fingers stretched around him and Jon felt a jolt of terrible realization, at how the fingers themselves looked like spider legs, thin and pointed and bristling with black hairs. They closed around the man, like Jon had seem them close around another boy half a lifetime ago, and Jon watched it lift him into the air, and hold him before its multifaceted gaze. All those eyes suddenly swiveled to focus in unison. He watched its hand clutch tighter and tighter, watched the man struggle, suddenly awake, and cry out. 

Watched his body crumple when the creature set him back on the ground, tucked against the railing of the graveyard. It wasn’t until the thing had settled again that Jon felt his knees unlock and he turned back to the crowd – who had noticed nothing, who had all kept on blissful and serene, as if they couldn’t see the predator roosting above them all – and he wanted to run, he did. 

He walked on numb and shaking limbs through the rest of his commute, and had the good sense of mind not to sink into a shivering heap until he was safely behind the locked door of his apartments, his back pressed firmly to the thick wood of his door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Amygdala, Amygdala, have mercy on the poor bastard. This one happens to show up after you kill Rom, or, stack your Insight above 40.


End file.
